you can do it (or shut up and make stuff)

Deborah Ellis, her work feels like home

Here is the question of the day, or at least a question that has been coming up a lot with various friends: are you an artist if you aren't actively making work? This then opens up the larger question of how do we define the term artist? (when I use the word I mean anyone who has a creative pursuit, musician, writer, visual artist, director, actor, dancer etc.) To the first question my immediate response is: Of Course You Are. To the second question my response is: The homeless guy camped in the tunnel between the 42nd street F and 7 stops, who sells drawings of alien invasions done in marker on cardboard. That is frogging commitment, plus he is GOOD.

I've been lucky enough to know a few artists in my life. My maternal grandmother painted portraits, my mother was a sculptor for decades before switching to writing, a cousin of sorts is a particularly accomplished painter (see above),  a close friend is the most productive committed artist I've ever known, when choosing between food and paint he always chose paint, well paint and cigarettes. I grew up watching my mother patina steel and bronze sculptures on our back porch. I consistently had slivers of paper glued to my socks because of her constant collage work and use of spray glue. We had a thirty pound block of clay, a kiln and oxy-gas torch tanks in our basement. My sister and I made clay sculptures (a guinea pig, a buddha, a mermaid, a spinx) and painted pictures. My sister posed for a portrait, slept under a quilt she sewed, stirred the fire with a poker she smithed. I learned how to use our guillotine of a paper cutter, painted watercolors, made a paper mache penguin. My mother matted and frame her collages, drilled holes in granite boulders to mount sculptures. I worked the guest book at her art openings. I began writing at age nine, including but not limited to, a serial I wrote in the second grade about a team of astronaut dogs (which may have been heavily "inspired" by Pigs in Space). I wrote a murder mystery at age twelve, my older sister read the first three pages and knew who dunnit. Creating was just a part of my life. Though that never made it easy. I wanted my drawings to be photorealistic and, in elementary school, felt completely defeated that I couldn't make it happen.  I wanted my writing to be original and complex, my predictable murder mystery was the first of many perceived failures. I grew up on art the way most kids grew up on video games and sports scores. But that doesn't mean that it has been easy for me to say, out loud, I am a writer.

a few of my mom's pieces in my childhood home, I always thought this room was magic

I now know that I'm an artist. I had believed that quietly in my own heart for a long time, but found it very difficult to admit it to other people. It was particularly hard when I finished school. After I graduated from college I didn't write anything, some manic journalling maybe, but nothing else. I wrote nothing for two years. I spent those two years working in publishing, filling out contract templates, numbering manuscript pages, staring at an unread slush pile, explaining production schedules to some of the greatest writers I've ever read. It is a unique type of torture to be a blocked artist working with other more prolific and successful artists. Ultimately it was inspiring, or at least having a conversation between myself and an author appear in a climatic scene of their bestselling novel was motivating. The next thing I wrote was a story for my grad school applications.

To those friends of mine I say this: if you haven't made work recently you are still an artist, you just aren't growing as an artist. You are an artist if you consistently make work over a long period of time, even if that period is broken by long stretches of blocked, dead, unproductive spells (aka depression, drunken blackouts, or sobering terror). You are an artist if you are passionate about your work, whether the work is manifested or just some dark and impenetrable cloud in your head.  Call yourself an artist if you have an artistic soul. And maybe that soul is tortured by having never made art (though this would put you in a subcategory of the thwarted, unrealized, or terrified artist). Maybe by calling yourself an artist you will find the space to actually make the art. Sylvia Plath said, "the worst enemy to creativity is self doubt." So get on that toad. Paint those pictures, take those photos, film that sketch, paste that collage, pop that lock, knit those arm warmers, write those god damn poems and stories and novels and plays and jokes and songs and scripts and journals and, god help us all, blogs.

 (or just listen to this song, 'cause we can't take this toad too seriously)