I'm an Artist
Car Wash, Tioga TX.
Throughout elementary and middle school, my friends called me an "artist." I always shook my head at that. I just liked drawing cartoons, animating flip books, taking photos, shooting 8mm film, painting models, and playing horns. "Art" was something girls did.
In third grade, we had a project where girls got to paint clay pots which would be fired at a kiln, and boys got to do math puzzles. I wanted to paint a pot. I even asked aloud if I could do that with the girls, even though that made me itch a little. No. That's for the girls.
In fourth grade, my parents found chalk sketches a friend of mine and I had made in our clubhouse, with kids peeing on other kids. They were greatly worried, and I had to bring each sketch before them and explain it, which I found both ear-burningly embarrassing and mystifying. I thought, "It's somebody peeing on somebody else. That's funny. I'm not sure how else to explain this." They asked if my friend and I peed on each other, and I said, "No, we don't pee on each other," and I put my drawings in the trash. We were not allowed to have a clubhouse, after that.
I can still remember the sad look on the art teacher's face, after I'd been recommended to his sixth grade art class, and I said, "No thanks." I remember it because I knew I was passing up something real, but by that point I had convinced myself that art was not something you learned, but something you discovered intuitively. Art class was for idiots. Or, to put it in more practical terms, every class is art class if you don't give a shit, and by 6th grade, I most distinctly did not give a shit. I did my math homework quickly and spent the rest of my time drawing Darth Vader from memory.
By 8th grade, I had gone from being the straight-A outgoing kid to the quiet kid who wasn't living up to his potential. Nice teachers and administrators would talk to me, and I'd be polite, but I stayed behind my wall. They had nothing I wanted. As long as I didn't fail a grade, I didn't care about school.
Finally, late in my senior year at my second high school, I took an art class. I was done with all the required stuff and purely had a slot to fill. It was the most fun I'd had in school, outside of orchestra, ever. I started imitating Japanese watercolors I'd seen at the Dallas Museum of Art. My teacher said I was very talented. She was kookie, and I liked her. I threw my paintings away.
At college, the "art isn't serious" thing left me, though I retained the "I'm not an artist" identity. I took an art class every semester, just for fun. I added art history, just out of curiosity. By my senior year I'd completed the curriculum for an art degree, but I didn't apply for it. What was the point? Nobody got a job with an art degree. Besides, I'd taken on the far more serious identity of being a writer. Writing was more respected, and I could directly relate "good writer" to "real job" to old people. In the 1980s-1990s, I edited a book, wrote tech manuals, taught English, wrote marketing copy, developed corporate training, and got essays published at my local NPR station and at the Dallas Morning News. That was who I was. A writer. Not an artist.
Twenty-five years later, COVID gave me the excuse to play with camera gear again. And for five years since then, I've shot film and digital, studied the masters, been to photography shows, shared my work with friends and strangers, gotten good feedback and praise, and this year, entered a contest and won ribbons in three categories. Maybe photography was easier for me to slip on because it was gear-oriented, which is old-school dude territory. Of course, gear is the trap in this art. People who focus on that don't get better. They just become deeply knowledgeable consumers.
Two of my winning photos were taken with a five year old iPhone. They won because I'm an artist, and an artist, eventually, sees the truth.