Observations of an artistic community...

So I've been working with a group of students for the past 4 months now, helping my professor show them the essential information they will need to know in order to survive in this new digital world. It's been both exciting and eye opening, we never really think about what our opinions have on our peers work and this experience has really shown me that the words we use and the way we express our thoughts, especially in relevance to something that someone has created, can have a truly deep impact. That being said, they can also have no impact at all. So which is better? In our world today, life is full of extremes, there no longer is a moderate, there is action or no action, democrat or republican, black or white. the idea of a gray is no longer accepted as it once was, but I digress, and have already lost my way...

I mention the impact we have on other people because I find myself suddenly fascinated with the idea of coherence and intent. As artists, where do we intend to venture with our work? As a college student, I see people simply finish work for their grade all the time, and I also see people put their heart and soul into a piece of work like they have time and time again and produce something that is a true reflection of who they are. And the truly ironic part of all this? The person that takes another step and makes their work personal, always makes something better than the person that shoots simply for a grade.

As I write this I am sitting here working on an image I shot over my holiday break, pandora radio is whirring away in the background, and I find myself truly satisfied with a piece of work for once. It's been a while since I've worked on a piece of personal work so to finally sit down and work on something that is only for me is a wonderful breathe of fresh air from my usual advertising work. Does that mean that this work will inherently be better than any of my advertising work? Possibly. But it does lead me to ask the intrinsic question of what my art is, what is the essence of my work?

I guess that's something for all of us to think about. What makes our work ours, if we just make work for a grade or money or that satisfying pat on the head, does that not defeat the purpose of making work? I say yes it does. Everything we make at any point in our lives, should be for the continuation and growth of our work. And thus ourselves.

Just for a little fun, I'll upload the shot I'm working on right now, it's still being edited, so I'll just have to come back and upload it again when it's all done.