“Ars gratia artis”

The English translation is “art for art’s sake”. This basically means art for no other purpose then art. It’s not about making money, or being famous, it’s just something the artist loves to do. I am not an artist in the typical definition. I cannot draw (besides stick figures) and I don’t have a passion for it. My senior year of high school my art teacher actually wrote in my yearbook, “Never take art again”. Seriously that was her advice. Now granted I spent that whole semester drawing mountains (a bunch of big triangles) and trying to draw Nike sneakers but still.

What my art teacher didn’t realize and I certainly didn’t at the time was, we’re all artist. The ability to draw doesn’t determine if you’re an artist or not. Michael Jordan is an artist, Stevie Wonder is an artist, Edgar Allen Poe was an artist, Muhammad Ali was an artist. Art can’t be defined by just one thing. People cry when they go to the Opera. The beauty of a tenor’s voice, or the story that’s being told takes over them emotionally, that’s art. I watched a speaker (Young -ha-kim) that talked about this in detail. He said that the artist in us all is stifled by our parents, our teachers, friends and so on. When a child tells his first lie, parents tell him/her that it’s wrong, but in actuality the moment they start lying story telling begins. Story telling is an art. If a child says “Mom an alien was at the bus stop”, the mom usually says “There’s no such thing stop that nonsense”, instead of saying “What did this alien look like”? “Where is he from”? I was that kid. I could barely draw a circle but I could tell a story.

Now let’s compare my art teacher senior year to my history teacher freshman year. My freshman year in high school I had a teacher named Mr.Foshay. His class was fun but I had absolutely no idea what was going on half the time. Our first test I realized that every historic date I was being asked about left my mind somewhere between gym and lunch. My mind was blank so I did what most high school students do, I guessed. The problem was at the end of the test there was an essay question. The answer had to be two paragraphs long. So I did what I knew best, I told a story. The story had absolutely nothing to do with the question but I went on with it anyway. It had aliens in it, movie references, the works. I knew when I got my test back I would be the first student to get a negative number on a test. As Mr.Foshay walked down the aisle the next day he stopped at my desk, smiled, and then laid the test down.

When I flipped the test over the grade was a 77. There is no way in the world I was reading this right. I couldn’t believe I got a 7 on a test, Mr.Foshay in his frustration with me must of written another 7 by accident. Then I read the comment on the back an it said, “Great story, very creative, I enjoyed reading it”. Mr.Foshay became my favorite teacher that day. He could have easily written what I did off as garbage or told me to quit school and never return again, but instead he recognized a strength and overlooked a weakness.

I wrote a poem my senior year in high school. To this day I have no idea why, but after that I would write these little poems. Most I threw away, but some I would keep and read to my mom. She actually took one of them (against my wishes) and got it published in a book that had a collection of poems. After awhile I stopped writing. In my mind I had not time for it. Then out of the blue three years ago a good friend of mine and I are sitting in Panera Bread talking about me writing a blog. The rest you can say is history. I am an artist, I realize that now. I am passionate about it; it’s something I love to do.

People have told me that my words inspire them. If my words make a difference in someone else’s life for the better why would I ever stop writing? If I would have listened to my art teacher I might have never started in the first place. We are all artist, we just have to find out what our Mona Lisa is.