To be, or not to be, an artist... THAT is the question!

  A friend that I hold dear, Robin, once told me that what she does isn't art. This, after I told her what a beautiful gift she had sent me- it was a picture of a horse, sculpted in folded paper. For me, I cannot even imagine how to make something like it. Yet, she doesn't consider herself an artist.... What?!
  This is quite an undertaking, this post... It is a very in depth sort of subject, yet it is so difficult to put into words or even to have people absorb.
  When you take something that has been scrutinized for literal centuries, or since the beginning, and still has negative connotations as the core societal understanding, it is nearly impossible to rearrange people's individual associations.
  We've all shrugged off the drunken or doped up artist, as if that were the norm. I'm ashamed to say that even I am guilty of that social faux pas. When you think of successful, you think of Mr. Bigwig in his big city office, somewhere, not of lowly artist in a down home setting with their easel in the back forty (acreage talk).
  You'd be amazed at how difficult it is to get an artist to admit they are an artist, sometimes. I've had speeches, even with a crowd full of nothing but artists, and they nervously shuffled around when I asked them to proclaim, to everyone, that it's their profession. Individuals have also told me that it is impossible to even tell their own family members. It's shocking.
  So, in lieu of wasting your precious reading time, I won't try to convince you that you should be proud to be an artist. I will tell you that you should be, LOL.
  Commercial art and technology are, fortunately, beginning to change that wicked societal ignorance. It may be long after I am gone that I'll see the remedy, but it is a welcome change.
  If you have questions as to whether or not you are an artist, or if you want to be one: You can look it up in a dictionary, find whatever answer suits your brain on the Internet, or just decide for yourself.
  My high horse bucks me off here, when I tell you that I've only been able to call myself an artist for about the past six or seven years. It's a long road, hang in there baby!