A number of years ago, I posted an article entitled “Artist or Artisan?,” wherein the differences between the two were explored, relying extensively on the ideas of a painter, John Stillmunks. With all the hubbub about artificial intelligence, I thought I would pose the same question to OpenAI via ChatGPT. So I posed the question in this form: “In an essay of approximately 500 words, explain the essential difference(s) between an artist and an artisan. Document all quotations.”

This is the response (which came in seconds):

Artists and artisans are both creative individuals who produce beautiful and functional objects. However, the essential differences between them lie in their purpose, intention, and approach to their craft. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, an artist is “a person who practices any of the various creative arts, such as painting, sculpture, music, or writing, to produce works that are primarily aesthetic in nature.” On the other hand, an artisan is “a worker in a skilled trade, especially one that involves making things by hand.”

One key difference between an artist and an artisan is their intention. While both create objects, the artist’s primary intention is to express themselves and communicate a message to their audience. As noted by artist Jasper Johns, “Art is much less important than life, but what a poor life without it.” Art is a means of communicating one’s emotions, ideas, and beliefs through visual, auditory, or literary media. It is a reflection of the artist’s inner world, experiences, and values.

In contrast, an artisan’s primary intention is to create functional objects that serve a specific purpose. Their work is focused on functionality, rather than self-expression or communication. According to artisanal bread baker Chad Robertson, “The goal is not just to make great bread; it’s to make great bread that is accessible to everybody.” The artisan’s focus is on creating well-crafted objects that are useful and serve a practical purpose.

Another important difference between artists and artisans is their approach to their craft. Artists tend to have a more experimental approach to their work, exploring new ideas and techniques to express their creativity. They often work independently, outside the boundaries of traditional artistic styles and techniques. As artist Pablo Picasso once said, “Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.” Artists are free to experiment, push boundaries, and create their own unique style.

In contrast, artisans tend to work within the boundaries of their craft, using traditional techniques and methods that have been passed down through generations. According to ceramicist Frances Palmer, “I’m not a ceramic artist, I’m a potter. I make things that are useful.” The artisan’s focus is on mastering their craft and producing high-quality, functional objects that are both beautiful and practical. They often work within established styles and techniques, striving to perfect their skills and achieve excellence in their craft.

In conclusion, while both artists and artisans create beautiful and functional objects, their intentions and approaches to their craft are fundamentally different. Artists focus on self-expression and communication, while artisans focus on functionality and the mastery of traditional techniques. As noted by philosopher R.G. Collingwood, “Art is self-expression; craft is the expression of a tradition.” Both artists and artisans play an important role in our society, enriching our lives through their creative work.

It’s not a bad answer. I find it interesting that ChatGPT took the instruction, “Document all quotations” to mean “include quotations,” even though they were not all entirely relevant. Aside from that, the answer is complete and well organized, if not nuanced. That, of course may be the result of the prompt, which is itself not terribly sophisticated, but then I’m new to AI, and perhaps some massaging of the prompt might have resulted in a more refined answer.

Interestingly, the differences posited by ChatGPt are remarkably similar to those expressed by Stillmunks, although the emphasis is a bit different. And it’s interesting that Stillmunk’s main thesis still holds: “no, not everybody’s an artist (despite what they may think).” But we have to remember that at the end of it, it is still nothing but a label. We are free to cross the line in either direction, depending on the current project. No one ever said that we have to be either artist or artisan all of the time.

The answer is, of course, “as large as possible.” So perhaps a better question is, “when is the audience big enough?” This is a question that in one form or another I have put to a number of artists who work in different media, and the answers reflect both the artist and the media involved. Some theatre artists, for example, say that it depends on the venue while others say that it is a matter of the average audience size for that particular genre in that particular theatre. One director I know says only that there should be more people in the audience than there are on stage.

Visual artists, of course, differ in their answers, and those answers have to do with whether an audience are those who look or those who buy. Musical artists take into consideration the type of music being played, type of amplification, and the acoustics and ambience of the space. Some artists will answer the question with “when it provides enough revenue to break even”—or make a profit. Some artists don’t seem to be concerned with income; they just want to make the art. Every artist, it seems, has a different answer. And perhaps that means that we are once again asking the wrong question.

To get to that, we must ask what artists want from the audience. Is it enough for the audience members to sit through the presentation or look at the work on display, or do we want more? Most artists do want more, but what is the “more” that they want?

If we are trying to get rich, we will give one answer. If we are just trying to make a living from our art, we will give another. If we are trying to do neither, what are we trying to do? Perhaps we should examine our motives for making art in the first place. Are we trying to entertain, create beauty, change minds, challenge political stances, instill empathy, highlight a social problem, impact the audience members in some other way?

Once we can articulate why we are creating art in the first place, then we can better determine when the audience is “big enough.” In other words, how many of our audience will have to “get” what we are saying for us to be satisfied that  our work is successful in what it is trying to achieve? That is, how many must we entertain? How many must perceive beauty? How many must change their political stance? How many begin to understand empathy? How many recognize that social problem? The number, of course, will vary from artist to artist, but it would be well for each artist to know the answer for themselves.

Perhaps a greater problem for artists are that we may never know how many of our audience were impacted by our work in the ways that we intended—or when. (I once sold a piece a full month after the show in which it was shown.) We can, in some instances, discover how popular our work is by the numbers in our audiences or the number of likes we get on social media, but we can never really know who we have actually touched with our work—unless the audience member tells us. The best we can do is to keep our eyes on our goals, continually evaluate our methods and motives, and keep producing work that we are proud to have done.

It’s fairly common knowledge among artists that not everyone will like everything we produce. A piece has to resonate with an audience member to be appreciated, particularly to the point of purchase, and even then it’s a hit-or-miss proposition. Ask any artist who has rented a table at an arts fair and displayed work, or who has tried to get poetry published, or a comic accepted anywhere. In some of those instances there are gatekeepers, while in others, the art is presented directly to the potential audience—either physically or electronically. Still it’s unpredictable who will like what, and even more random when trying to determine who will buy what.

Many of us cannot afford to keep renting art show spaces, or self-publishing with no accompanying marketing effort. But we can’t not show our work; the result of that would be absolutely no sales. So we seem to be caught, and do the best we can—showing our work when opportunities we can afford present themselves, and holding back when we have no affordable alternatives. Given this situation, what are we to do?

Since not everyone is going to like everything we produce, we need to examine the relationship between our work and our potential audience. We need to realize that our work and our audience should match. This realization often leads artists to modify what they do so that what they try to say does appeal to everyone. This, of course, waters down the artist’s voice and, more importantly, the message of the piece.

Rather than modify our art, we would do better to concern ourselves with our potential audience. To increase our chances at finding those who might find our work resonant, we could do one of two things: (1) If we can find an existing potential audience whose members are interested in the sorts of things we have to say, we increase our chances of sales tremendously. (2) Failing that, we might develop an audience whose members are interested in the subject matter of our art.

The first alternative is perhaps a little easier—it means that we don’t enter every art fair we can afford, or show our work in every possible show. Rather, it means that we pick our shows carefully, that we research what sorts of work have been shown in the past and whether there are particular criteria for work that might match our own interests. Show listings are not all that difficult to find on the internet. There are a couple of web sites dedicated to directing artists to shows, and usually the criteria for the shows are clearly stated. This is not something that can be said of most art fairs.

Developing an audience is a more daunting task. However, there are at least a few conferences a year, and a number of books devoted to just that. Admittedly, these are aimed at the live theatre market; however, there is much they can teach artists in all media. Theatre folk are constantly trying to match material that they want to produce with potential audience and determine ways to increase the size of that audience. Some are very successful at it, so there is much they can teach the rest of us.

The point is that once we realize that our art doesn’t have to speak to everyone, the sales/marketing side of our artistic lives become just a little easier. Once we learn to curate and cultivate our audience, we can spend more of our time concentrating on actually making the work that matters to us, and that is the important thing.

With all the current emphasis on branding, many artists are working for consistency instead of developing and evolving. This, of course, causes artists to produce work that is strikingly similar to previous work, and that continues as the brand is built. This process, in turn, causes the artist to be a producer of artifacts which are all similar, rather than a creator of new and wonderful things. Artists then become artisans—and there’s certainly nothing wrong with that, except that when one is involved foremost in production, there is little room for growth.

In The Creative Act: A Way of Being, Rick Rubin says:

Though artists generally aren’t aware of it, that end work is a by-product of a greater desire. We aren’t creating to produce or sell material products. The act of creation is an attempt to enter a mysterious realm. A longing to transcend. What we create allows us to share glimpses of an inner landscape, one that is beyond our understanding. Art is our portal to the unseen world.

If this is true, then our job as artists is to enter into this mysterious inner landscape and reveal as much as we can in our work. In order to this we must make our brand not consistency, but exploration and revelation. We must turn our attention away from creating things that look or sound or read alike and toward unearthing new insights, and go wherever that takes us. We must stop avoiding change and discover newness. We must get out of our “own lane” and embrace change. As Jerry Saltz advises:

Artists: Never stay in your own lane. Change styles if you like; switch mediums, materials, whatever. There’s no need for consistency. When people tell you to stay in your lane, they’re trying to hold you back or keep you down. Do whatever you want to do and you do it well.

But if we do that, if we switch up what we are doing, what about our comfort level? There is a certain sense of well-being that accompanies turning out artifacts that are similar. We know what we are doing; the work is not too difficult: we just do what we are used to doing, making a little change here and a little alteration there. Embracing change increases uncertainty, sometimes to the point of discomfort, but that discomfort allows us to evolve and grow—so we become even better artists.

And what about our audience? They are used to seeing/hearing a certain kind of product from us. If we stay with the tried and true path, we get similar results every time and our audience knows what to expect from us. Unfortunately, that can also cause our audience to get bored with us. Whereas, if we embrace change, our audience can be surprised every time we publish a new piece. Yes, we may lose some audience—those who expect the same thing every time. However, we may gain audience, simply because we show them something new with every new piece we make. Soon they will be eager to see what we produce next—our audience may well grow.

We need to consider all of this the next time our inner impulse says that we need to make a change. We need to listen to that impulse. Our growth in art demands it.

It’s difficult to go a day without seeing an article about artificial intelligence. AI has suddenly taken the world by storm. For writing there are ChatGPT, Copymatic, Wordtune, and Anyword. For art, the programs most in demand are Midjourney, DALL-E-2, Dream, and Craiyon. For the music world, there are platforms specifically for music generation, music production, music videos, and music composition.

The specific topics of AI articles are all over the place: many are concerned with students at the high school and collegiate level using AI to do their assignments. A number are detailing specific AI platforms to use to achieve specific results or strategies for using particular AI platforms. A number of articles consider AI just another tool to be used for all sorts of work and embrace its use. Others take the opposite view and deplore the use of AI for creative work, saying that AI products are derivative, an argument that devolves into a copyright debate. Speaking of which, the US Copyright Office has already ruled that AI-generated art cannot be copyrighted.

But few articles have touched on the use of AI for the serious artist, and even fewer on the philosophical argument that such moves by artists would engender. The whole AI argument focuses on product—whether it’s a section of computer code or a freshman term paper or a novel, or a piece of visual or aural art and does not speak to the process of creation. And that, I think, is a sticking point for a number of artists.

Most artists get into art because they want to make things. Some of the things that artists want to make are, of course, not things at all, but experiences: theatre, dance, ephemera of all sorts. It may be that AI is, or will become capable of generating such experiences, but that does not yet seem to be the case, so let’s concentrate on artifact-producing and what AI-produced work does to the creator.

AI changes the role of the artist. In the case of a writer, for example, the writer no longer produces word order that is the product of their brain synapses and the way the writer’s mind associates ideas. Even if the AI is instructed to write in the style of the writer, the role of the writer is changed from creator to instruction-giver/editor and the resulting artifact would be completely different. So long as the writer is okay with that, it could be a successful use of AI and might produce work of a reasonable quality, but most artists I know really are not looking for a change of role or an easier way to do what they do. They would much prefer to be hands-on creators because of what they get out of the process.

For technical writing or production art, AI could be an immense time-saver. However, for creative work, it is difficult to imagine artists being willing to hand over the creative process to a machine, no matter how much time it saved. Many artists are story-tellers, and story-telling is a very different activity from giving instructions about telling a story. As noted, the creative process is just too important to them.

Of course, the ongoing existence and improvement of AI might produce a different kind of artist than we now have—one who wants to be an instruction-giver/editor instead of one who enjoys and appreciates the process of creating every detail. That sounds like science fiction, but so did AI not long ago. Regardless of the change that AI brings, we will continue to have people who want to create, who want to explore the creative process. What that will mean to the future of art, we cannot say, but we can be assured that art will continue and that the audience for art will continue to exist.

We are just now beginning to understand the impact of the pandemic on our psychology and physiology. And things are not looking wonderful. For example, Many experts argue that the pandemic has “accelerated a shift in attention spans.” Some say it is the pandemic coupled with the increasing amount of time we spend online that have shortened attention spans. Still others say these factors have not reduced our attention spans, but rather have reduced “our ability to engage with new ideas,” so “it’s harder to get our attention in the first place.”

Regardless of the exact nature of the problem, no one denies that it exists. The problem remains that we have difficulty giving our attention to projects for sustained periods of time. While this is a problem for nearly everyone, it is particularly acute for artists. As artists we must engage new ideas at every turn, particularly when working on a new project. Many of us are used to working for long hours at a stretch, and a significant percentage of us are finding that difficult in the post-pandemic world. It makes our work attempts more frustrating. Since the condition that we are experiencing was built up over time, the possible solutions are not likely to be immediate, but we must at least begin looking for them.

While he does not acknowledge the exact nature of the problem, senior art critic for New York Magazine and Pulitzer Prize winner Jerry Saltz, offers one such solution: “Artists maybe looking for a prompt to get them working: Try approaching a day in your studio as a jam session. Not doing things that take a long time. But working out things spontaneously in response to what is being worked out. What’s deeper inside will come out this way too.”

This idea can be developed even further and our work can become a reflection of the way we are currently thinking; it can become broken into very short segments that do not require long spans of concentration: we can work on one detail in a painting or sculpture. We can read an act or a few scenes of a play at a sitting instead of the whole thing. We can write a page or few pages—or even a few paragraphs—at a time instead of the dozen pages that we used to target. We can break a photo editing session into segments so that we are fresh and creative for the short time we are committing to each segment. We can even juggle tasks so that we work on them for short times before trading off to the next one.

And those of us in collaborative arts need to remind ourselves that our collaborators are likely experiencing the same problems and frustrations that we are, so the structure of the collaborative process may need alteration to be successful.

We should, of course, be aware that there may be new frustrations in modifying our work routines; however, the reward of actually accomplishing something (and thereby maybe tricking ourselves into longer involvement than we anticipated) makes that frustration worth it.

The key is to use short pieces of time productively instead of becoming frustrated because we cannot maintain concentration for the longer periods of time that we used to use. Doing this we can again become productive rather than wallowing in frustration and accomplishing nothing.

Steven King’s novel Billy Summers is many things, but one of the things it is, is an ode to writing. At one point a character talks about the act of writing and how the world of the author disappears as the author enters the world that they are creating, how the writer is able to see the smallest details that they are describing and how the world they are creating becomes as real, the specifics as clear as any in the real world. Repeatedly King comments on how real time disappears when one is writing, how the writer becomes so absorbed in the imaginative world of the book being written that they almost cease to exist in the world we normally inhabit. This is the ideal condition for creating imaginative realities.

And, of course, this applies to arts other than writing as well. It certainly applies to theatre and film. Whether one is an actor involved in a scene or a director working with actors and designers, one needs to be completely involved in the process. The same holds true for a painter or a sculptor, a dancer or a choreographer, a singer or songwriter, a composer or a musician.

Whatever our art, we must enter the imaginative world completely and fully, paying attention to the smallest of details. If we do this with our whole being we will be completely immersed in the work. Time in the real world will disappear. The entire real world may disappear, and only our work will exist. We may or may not be in flow. When we come back to reality, much time will have passed without our noticing, and we may be tired. But it will be a good tired, and the work we have done will be our best.

But there are obstacles. There are many things for us to think about. There are large issues: inflation, politics, climate, racism, fascism, reproductive rights, LGBTQ+ rights, health care. There are more local issues: weather, traffic, education, housing, food costs, neighbors. And there are personal issues: money, health, relationships, mental health. All of these touch us one way or another. It’s a wonder then with so much to occupy our minds that we have any capacity left for our art (and I’m sure I’ve missed some). But we manage the distractions as best we can and press on.

Or at least we try. Those many things to think about prey on our minds when we try to create. In training beginning actors we advise them to leave their problems and worries at the stage door—such get in the way during the rehearsal and performance. Yet we are seldom completely successful at getting all students to do this. And, unfortunately, this is an even greater problem in a post-pandemic-lockdown world—not only for students and actors, but for teachers and directors as well.

Still, we must try. And we may well emulate that practice we teach beginning actors. We might well make a ritual of leaving our worries and concerns at the door of our studio. We might even lock them in a locker or box, which can be either real or virtual. But we would do well to drop our concerns at the entrance to our workspace; they will surely be there when our work session is over—ready to overtake our minds again. But for the time we are in our creative space, our minds can be free to work only on our imaginative reality, on creativity, on making. If we make this a practice, pretty soon it will become habit. And that habit will be reflected in our creativity and productivity. We will experience the joy of time creatively spent as do King’s characters.

Why is it so hard to take advice, particularly when we know the advice to be good? Certainly no one can tell us how to create, but often those who study the creative process have ideas that can help aid creativity, particularly when there’s a difficulty. Thus we have individuals like Julia Cameron, Austin Kleon, and Maria Popova, just to name a few. And consistently these advisors and many others tell us that when there is a problem with creativity or productivity, the answer is to keep making whatever it is that we make—to keep plugging away and the block will dissolve and our creativity will flow. I have even offered this advice myself.

Why then, when we find our flow of creativity blocked, do we not heed that same advice? Maybe it’s because we are all somewhat egotistical when it comes to creativity. Perhaps it’s because we are stubborn. Whatever the reason, we don’t—until we do.

This happened to me recently, and I hope that I have learned from it. My creativity and productivity were practically nil. There was no particular reason for this, so far as I knew. Ideas were just not happening, but rather than worrying about it, I just used the time to rest. But it kept going on. Still it was not a major problem, that is, until I realized that I had a project coming due soon.

Every year I create and send a holiday card out to friends and acquaintances. And it was time for that to happen. The deadline is self-imposed, but it comes a while before the holidays to allow for printing, mailing, and all the logistics that go into such a project. Since I have done this project for a number of years, not doing it was not really a consideration. So I finally decided that it was time to make the project happen. I already had images that I created for the project, but they were far from their final form, and that was the problem.

So I jumped in and began to work only to discover that some of the images did not really work the way I had thought that they would. So, instead of pushing, I went back to some images I had created earlier to see if there were any possibilities there. And there were.

And then an interesting thing happened. As I began to examine possibilities, new ideas formed, new possibilities presented themselves; I found new ways of working with the images I had started with. Before it was over, I had not just one card, but five. So I picked one for this year—not the one I had started with, but one of the others, and will use the others in the coming years. And I’m finding that my mind does not seem to be done with this project even though images have been selected, captioned, sent to the printer, and returned. So I will enjoy the new stream of ideas and probably continue to develop those ideas, even though they support a project that only happens once a year.

The point of this is, of course, to remind ourselves to follow good advice, and when we are creatively blocked to make something—anything—to get the ideas flowing again.

The Astros won the World Series. I know because two people texted to tell me. Otherwise I would not have known. Because I don’t follow baseball, I have no interest in who does or does not win the World Series, or any other game for that matter. Simply put, baseball does not interest me or impact my life.

Unfortunately a number of artists take the attitude toward politics that I have toward baseball. The difference is, of course, is that no matter how much we wish it, no matter how we try to ignore it, politics does impact our lives. Even those of us who are so absorbed in our work that we live like hermits, closing ourselves off from the rest of the world, particularly the news, will be impacted by politics in some way or another before we are done.

Given that, it would be well to pay at least a small amount of attention to what is going on politically and what the choices are in any given election, because if we don’t, we are likely to be taken off-guard by changes suddenly forced on us by the political system.

This year particularly, we need to look at the choices before us. Never have the lines been so clear-cut between the opposing parties. One party seems intent on establishing authoritarian policies, removing reproductive rights, eliminating Medicare and Social Security, reducing privacy rights, allowing hatred, bigotry, racism, and anti-Semitism to govern public forums, and supporting failed theories of trickle-down economics. The other party is vociferously opposed to all of those things, and is taking what is to my mind a far more positive approach to solving the problems facing the nation by advancing practical solutions.

Again, if we think that none of these issues will touch us, we are sadly mistaken. Some of these policies have already been implemented at the state level, and have certainly impacted, if not us, someone that we know. So these are real issues that really impact our lives, not just talking points. The very least we can do is inform ourselves on the issues and of the threats to democracy that are now part of political discourse, and vote. Compared to the possible outcome of the current election, the time it takes to learn about the issues and vote is a very small investment.

And we should not hide behind the “but it’s only one vote” pseudo-defense. As a matter of fact, there are a number of elections that have been decided by a single vote and even more that have been decided by miniscule margins. So our votes do matter.

And this year they matter more than ever. This year there is an unambiguous difference between the parties and the outcomes they envision for the country. This year the choice is about what kind of country we will live in, perhaps for a very long time. This year the election is important, perhaps more important than any in recent memory, and even if we don’t campaign, or contribute, or volunteer, we need to do our part. We need to vote!

Last week reading an essay in The Marginalian about Loren Eiseley’s musings on the meaning of life by Maria Popova I ran across a statement about consciousness’ “irrepressible impulse to make meaning out of indifferent fact.” This led to my musing about making meaning of life, which in turn, led to musing about meaning in art, and wondering if the two were somehow related.

The meaning of life is a question which is too big for me, but the question of meaning in art is a different thing, and one that I thought was worth examining. It is obvious on the face of it that not all art, or even most art, is meant to reflect the meaning of life, so we can dismiss that idea immediately. There may well be pieces that attempt this, but it is not a significant percentage.

There is no argument that art has meaning, at least some art. Perhaps even most art in some way reflects on some aspect of the human situation. Other art may not; its existence is its only meaning. And art is not really utilitarian, although some of it does cause viewers to think, to consider; other art simply provides pleasure because it is interesting to observe. Given that, why have art at all?

Some artists seem to be impelled to tell stories regardless of the media in which they work. We find stories in written work, film, in song, in instrumental music, in dance—virtually everywhere. Such stories reflect not only all aspects of life, but speculate about possible futures or focus on fantasies. Other artists are not interested in stories but rather impressions or feelings that they create work to communicate. Again the variety of media is extensive.

And artists are motivated by any number of things. Some are motivated by social conditions, some by domestic situations. Still others by dreams. Others by a conversation they overheard or something they read. Some by nature. Some by the news. Some want to better the world; some just want to entertain. In other words, artists can be motivated in an endless number of ways. And the variety of art work they produce is also seemingly endless and runs the entire gamut from profound to trivial.

Yet we label all these things that they create as “art.” If they do all fall into that single category, what is the impetus for their creation that can apply throughout that category?

Although the motivation, media, meaning, and depth of art varies from artist to artist, the impetus seem to remain the same, although the strength of the impetus also seems to vary from individual to individual: in some it’s just a tickle; in others it’s a necessity.

That impetus is simply the human urge to create. Whether what the artist makes is insightful or superficial, large or small, complicated or simple seems not to matter at all. Whether the artists sell their work or hide it in the attic also seems to have little impact. How many people see the work often makes no difference. Whether the artist receives recognition or not is of no import. What matters is the making. And it seems that’s all that matters—all the rest in ancillary.  Of course, we can find counter-examples to all of these instances, but on the whole, the making is what’s important.

Keep making!