Art is subjective

I have this love-hate relationship with "art"

I think it's not the thing itself I have an issue with. I love to look at art, read it, listen to it. All kinds. I love to make dolls and stitch things and write things. With me it's more the definition. I have been called a crafter and a storyteller rather than an artist. My "crafts" are not fine art, I'm told, and my writing is too colloquial and too down home...

I wonder what people would think if they knew Shakespeare's critics and contemporaries called him a writer for the unwashed masses...

Hey, I'm no Shakespeare, but just because I don't have a MFA doesn't mean I can't make things and ask people to pay money for them.

I recently read a comment on a blog, posted anonymously of course, where the commenter complained that she had spent years studying art, knew how to put something together "correctly" and yet people were putting crap up on Etsy and selling it...

So what, I wonder, gives her the right to decide what's crap?

Well, I guess the same thing that makes other people not buy her "art"

Really, it's because art is subjective. Sure, most people can agree that Michelangelo is art, but not everyone loves him. I once stood in front of Botticelli's Birth of Venus in the Uffizi museum in Florence, silently crying my eyes out at my perceived perfection, and had someone tell me they couldn't stand one more boring painting. They had museum burnout.

We had a complete difference of subjective opinion there.

So what makes art to you? Does it have to be studied? Spontaneous? Performance? Tell!

sidelined

man, I have the attention span of a gnat on crack

newsletter got sidelined, but I'm on it, I swear

right now I'm doing data entry and watching Andrew Zimmern

working on a newsletter

yep, working on newsletter for Yahoo group, thanks to BA, who was doing one last night and making me feel guilty.

Will probably post here, too

obstacles and inspiration

so, this past week was full of obstacles to writing.

I find lack of time due to my day job (publishing, which is a joy, but busy) and stress to be the biggest obstacles to my personal writing time. I laugh hysterically, in fact, when people say I went into publishing so I could put my writing first. I write 75% less now than when I worked at a library and could leave my job at the office.

Stress is big, too, though. Someone broke into my car last week and stole all of the electronics, creating expensive havoc. This? Gives me stress. Especially since they did it in broad daylight *IN MY YARD*. Then someone hacked a paypal button, stealing money that goes to a gay charity, essentially.

Nice.

A life of crime must be way easier than writing.

So I decided that I need to revisit my inspiration. Travel. Cowboys. Cowboy hats on dashboards. I love the ching ching sound at the beginning of a fiddle riff. I love Tim McGraw. I love Venice at sunset, when all of the buildings are reflected in the water, and everything is quieting down a little. I love steak and pizza and a good, hard workout. I like a man in Wranglers, hot and sweaty and a little wild. I love the mountains in the summer and fall, when Texas is just too hot.

So what are your obstacles and inspirations?

it's been a rough week

so it's no wonder I didn't get to promo my new title here until now!

It's called Pictures of You, and it's a m/m/f menage--

Actually, it's a m/m, m/f then m/m/f

*g*

here's the blurb

Ryan and Shreve share an apartment that has it all for such an old building. An open floor plan, a huge shower, and a picture window in the bedroom. When Ryan notices he and Shreve are being spied on by the attractive female photographer across the way, he decides it's time to get friendly with the neighbors. Real friendly. And he sets out to get Shreve to jump on board with the plan.

Leanne has no idea the boys know she's watching. They inspire her to pick up her camera for the first time since a disastrous showing of her work, and they make her hot, but she's not sure she wants to meet her subjects. Maybe she can apply what they teach her to her own personal life, though, and make everything picture perfect.


here's the link :D