Being and Becoming

I chose a chocolate at random and was delighted - once again - by Winnie's article: Becoming An Artist. If you haven't read it, do yourself a favour and go enjoy the story of her daughter's fourteenth birthday party. What an undeniable memory that night must have been for those girls! I would have been in heaven. The twenty-four hour long party consisted of a group of girls being guided by Winnie through each exercise in SARK's book, "How To Be An Artist". I highly recommend following suit! I don't know that you will "become" or "be" an artist as a result, but I am absolutely certain you will be better for having celebrated Life in such a rejuvenating, heartening way.

There is a tremendous difference between "becoming" and "being" an artist. The energy is different. The challenges are different. The goals are different. Most of us have already heard and accepted that the fears and excitement of writing a first successful book are nothing like the fears and excitement of trying to write a second book of equal value, thus proving the first one wasn't a fluke. It's not different for visual artists. The differences in challenges is the shift from pleasing only oneself to pleasing oneself and others. Argue with me all you like, but I declare that validation becomes an indispensible part of being an arist. I don't mean to say we live for it, that it becomes are raison d'etre, but only that we'll not continue to strive too long without it.

Becoming an arist is the building of the relationship between ourselves and art. Having become artists, the art becomes the way we relate to others; art becomes our relationship with the world around us. Since every relationship of every sort is unique (to a degree), I can't presume to tell you how to 'make the magic' of a healthy, long-lasting relationship. I don't believe artists or their becomings are magic. Creativity is inherent in all human beings. Creativity reveals itself in so many way - too many ways to be aware of them all - I can't presume to tell you "an artist is..."

I can tell you that, although the label artist still hangs awkwardly on my shoulders, my becoming consisted entirely of digging up the willingness to discover how things work, how I 'work', in order to find new ways to make them work differently, for the better, for the beauty, and for the hell of it. I was many years in the becoming, and any too-long stretch of time spent outside my studio requires me to return, temporarily, to the stage of becoming. Don't kid yourself into thinking that success or skill or self-assurance are static achievements. We learn to learn and then we learn and then we learn again. All professionals periodically return to the basics of their training when they lose heart, lose touch, or lose direction; if they don't, they no longer are, they forever were.

And the being? To be an artist, to remain an artist, I constantly have to find ways to fuel my interest, curiosity, and willingness. Those states of being are vastly more plentiful without encouragement in the becoming more so than in the being. The temporary fading of enthusiasm or creative ideas is not proof of a lack of authenticity. Don't fear it. No...you were not "fooling yourself" into thinking you are an artist. What that is is simply proof of your humanness. Artists are, above all other things, profoundly human...especially those of us who are not humanly profound. That is why the becoming is largely about finding out how you 'work', how you are made, what makes you human.

Don't fear your flaws. Hang them on the walls. Begin the relationship.

Stephanie K. Hansen 2006