"That's not Art. I could do that!"

I tend to like small bits of my paintings.
This makes me think I should work small

 On my last day of college classes, I dropped Mintos in a pop bottle and watched it spout like a fountain. I listened to a children's book read aloud while glass bottles shattered against a wall behind me. I played toss with a ball of yarn around a tree. I finger painted. I threw paper airplanes around an amphitheater while shouting iconic lines from popular movies.

I'm an art major.

Drawing of John, before I knew him.

Did I think it was fine art? That's actually kind of irrelevant. I don't really care if it was art or not. Did it have a purpose? Yes, we were experimenting with time and space. We were creating an illusion of an experiences the same way a painter can create a visual illusion on a canvas. Do I realize that the previous sentence will sound like nonsense to most people? Yes. Yes it sounds nonsensical. You will have to take my word for the legitimacy of these activities.

Ink Wash!!

I'm not taking much of my art portfolio home with me. Today I gave away all of my paintings to two class mates who will paint over them and use the canvas for their own art. I gave away a bunch of ceramics too. And I got home to find a giant pile of 18x24 sketch books that also won't fit well on a train.

I struggled, these years of studying art, to invest myself in my work while remaining open enough to learn and make valuable mistakes. I erred on the side of not caring. I also struggled with why I was majoring in art. Thought I never wished for a moment that I was majoring in something else, I still feel like I am not quite an artist. I am not really part of the In crowd. I never managed to have a conversations with my some of my art teachers in which we both understood the question and the answer. Perhaps I kept the outsider attitude about art majors, even while I was one. I never took my own art very seriously. I am very serious about the craft part of it. But I never had any illusions about my work being "fine art." Perhaps I'm what my painting teacher called (with some condecension, bordering on scorn) a "paint-on-Sundays" artist. Not a "fine artist" at all. I think I'm okay with that, for now.

Slightly Splotched Victory
Over Pen and Ink

Whenever I was given a choice, I picked media that I was the least comfortable with, and subjects that were challenging. I repeated projects until I got closer to what I wanted to accomplish. I think I worked pretty hard. I know that I only scratched the surface and that I will have to keep working for many more years before I am a master of any of these skills.

A sheet nailed to a cork board.
Definition of "a study"

My violin teacher once told me that as I continued to play my instrument, I would slowly become aware of smaller and smaller movements of the muscles in my fingers; the tension and release of smaller and smaller muscles. At first I am concerned that I put my fingers down in the right place. Later on, I am aware that I should only let the tip of my finger hit the fingerboard. Then, I find that I can do that better if my wrist is pulled back at a particular angle. The subtlety goes on forever. But even after all that, it's not art unless I can simultaneously engage something much bigger than myself. An idea must be expressed through all this fine subtlety. To be an artist, you have to have something more than skill. Drive to keep working is what I usually call that other component. Talent might be a third part. But I don't know how that works at all, so I am not going to worry about it. Similarly, "art" is more than a drawing (or object) that is well executed.

Another small part of a "study" in color.

None of my "art" as a student here was more than studies. Most of it wasn't breaking any traditional art conventions, and it still wasn't "art." I was just working on the skill set. A recording of a musician, no matter how talented, playing scales is not particularly exciting, and it isn't quite "music." So I wasn't particularly sad to get rid of my paintings or my pottery. They served their purpose and I take the lessons learned home with me to apply them to other projects.

The rest of this painting was kind of blah.
But I was really excited about that bottle when I got it to look like a bottle.

So, that begs the question, what next, now that I am done being an art major? I think I might be an artist some day. (I don't know about a "Fine Artist." They seem to be a rather pretentious lot.) I think I have a skill set now that I didn't before. I certainly have a better (if incomplete) understanding of art history under my belt, which is really helpful in answering a lot of those "what is art" type questions. Here is where talent and drive really come into the picture. Will I have the drive to apply my skills to some kind of project that might be art? And, will I have the talent to do so successfully? I'm really quite interested to find out.

I have no idea what this is. Charcoal and chalk.