Wanna fight?

The creation of art is for everyone not a select few…



If you’ve located the time, space and need to call yourself an artist, somewhere along the trail I’m going to write, say or perform something that’s going to turn your vision of release into a wadded up pasted mess of a painting. Art is communication and at times it takes an act of humbled moments to reinvent the print assumed original.



What keeps people from creating is the art world itself.



Julia Cameron’s Artist Way shelters the quiet thinker, gifting each who reads with an opportunity to put faith back into a writing instrument, paint brush, a camera’s lens or woodwind music maker. It wasn’t until I studied her book The Vein of Gold that I realized how important the sale of your craft is to a continued rebirth. Sadly, the almighty dollar and the addictions connected to its presentation turns peace loving John Lennon types into fire breathing chapters ready to star in Saw 12 and 13.



Your voice and what it creates is art. I see it every week when Presbyterian ministers gain access to my recording studio to share 45 second messages. Their words can sometimes be more powerful than the official change of colors set free to roam on a Carolina hillside. It’s how you say it that makes what you do unique and in most cases a one of a kind.



The way you play with numbers or inspire coworkers and bosses is sought art. The banking masterminds who penetrated American trust will never be looked upon as being brilliant makers of art unless locked in closed rooms where a simple giggle from an up and comer simply says, “Wow that move was incredible.”



Art is the act of expression not a title handed to you by an educational system you forked billions to attend or quickly duct taped over your heart the moment your photograph brought a tear to an aging person’s eye.



Festivals are completely over flooded with brush stroker’s demanding top dollar for a piece of the colorized pie. Framing is astronomically priced and the cost of a good canvas is going to run you a few extra overtime hours at the job. I get it…been there done it but as an artist, what are you doing to preserve the beauty you feel at the height of an expression coming full light? You know, that moment where something you can’t explain reaches out and softly touches the corner of your world with a vibration made of invisible somethingness.



Elton John doesn’t write music…he is a lyricist. He is an artist. His poetic chapters blend incredibly well with masters of a separate shape of art. He doesn’t bash other writers walking beside his efforts of offering songs to sing to a world he may never meet—his efforts have always been fed by a willingness to collaborate with other means of creative flow such as Eminem, a rap artist who's constantly getting beat up by the media for stepping over the line on keeping his sound politically correct.



In the new Michael Jackson film This is it…the “man” most would’ve loved to have known steps from the shadows generated by the scent of paparazzi and or talk shows aimed at shocking their readers, listeners and viewers into believing what is printed or put onto millions of tiny frames is a spoken truth. It is their art.



As is the tiny garden carefully positioned with just enough sunshine on your neighbors lawn, your child’s determination to one day learn how to play the flute or a cousin aiming his entire all at one day participating in the X-games as a high flying bicyclist who flips, dips and takes a curve swifter and smoother than the ice cream scooper at Ben and Jerry’s.



Art doesn’t get the credit it deserves because those who secretly hide their pouring out of the inner being do so by way of shying away from proper display—and why does this occur because the world of art believes it’s already got enough players. They make sure nobody feels welcome therefore silencing what could have become another generations inspiration.



Mrs. Foster at Riverside Jr. High painstakingly put up with my disliking of the color wheel calling me irrational and irritating to teach—once shaken off, blending bleach white with cream seemed more appropriate to me because an element of pearl scraped its presentation across the bold face lion sketched hours earlier. Tell me again how Andy Warhol got away with playing his game?



Often accused of being Andy is Peter Max who best handled the process by tossing aside his creative education to make what has become some of the most prolific cultured pieces of our time but what makes him last longer than the candy coated outside of a root beer flavored sucker is a personalized awareness of the chaser—the next in line to take what he uncovered to a level he can’t reach without them.



There’s too much closed mindedness in the world of art. Noses are twisted and turned so tight it’s a wonder we don’t read more about flu and cold drownings. As a writer I’m constantly driven to a white line then dropped off—readers either take in what’s been given away or they find reason to argue without ever putting a pen to their own paper. A great example is the most recent success of Paranormal Activity, which cost $15,000 to make. Steven Spielberg loved what he saw, purchased the rights and before deciding to reinvent the idea elected to participate with the element of raw meets realty. Very easily he could've stained this success story with a hot shot producer director approach believing what he has already accomplished was the medicine fed into the veins of a newer place in American movie making.



As brilliant as you are there’s no human on this planet that’ll ever be gifted with enough vision in their eye as a photographer, stank in their voice as a musician or thunder in their butt to win Dancing with the Stars that’ll match the natural beauty of The Grand Teton’s in Wyoming or the seriously larger than life Grand Canyon, Niagra Falls or the unforgettable blue glow of a unperfected edge connected to an Alaskan glacier.



People have gone clinically insane or totally weirded out in public during a self driven pursuit to be looked upon as being a great creative. The cold hard facts remain, fame can’t be realized without fans…your biggest will forever be those you teach.



Steal my art…



arroecollins@clearchannel.com