Struggling Artist: A Vignette

Inevitably and invariably, I am asked the question I dread but expect. I know it is coming, yet I still do not know how to answer. When asked what I do and when I reply that I am a professor in a Department of Art Education and Art History, I feel the weight of the unavoidable hanging in the air: “What kind of art do you make?” Each time it is asked by someone, I feel a wash of shame and remorse when I answer this question honestly. I don’t make anything. I am not a painter. I am not a photographer. I am not a sculptor. I am not into mixed-media, I don’t do installations or performance pieces, I can’t even pretend that I do conceptual art. Except for the three requisite studio art classes in my Art History Bachelor’s degree, I have no real art-making background. Yet, I profess to know a lot about art and this feels a bit fake, like the proverbial skinny chef; the one that you shouldn’t trust because it does not seem like she is eating the food she makes. I feel guilt about being an art educator who does not make art.

When my colleagues’ work goes up in the Faculty Show at the university’s art gallery, when I saw a recent call for the USSEA exhibition “Art Educators as Artists,” or when I read about arts-based research, I worry that the phony police will arrive at my office and demand to see what I have been making lately. I think about what would be the easiest thing to take up as an art form. Collage?

I struggle with the understanding that my career is built upon looking at someone else’s art, at being a voyeur of sorts. I watch and comment, I look and critique, but I don’t participate in the making of the work. I am a “gazer,” in this way. I associate this word, in the Foucaultian sense, with power and the dominant structures that influence our thoughts about knowledge (Foucault, 1977). So, when asked what type of art I make, and when I answer, “I don’t make any, I just look at it,” I cringe internally at how this sounds: standoffish, aloof, unapproachable. My research and work revolves around trying to make art and museums the opposite of these adjectives: inviting, welcoming, participative. But, is this discrepancy akin to having a soccer coach who never played soccer? Can you trust him to really know how the game is played? Is it authentic if I don’t truly know the struggles and victories of making art?

Can one be an art educator and not make art? Can I play a supportive role in the arts, encouraging and nudging others to make art while not making it myself? I honestly believe that the answer to these questions is yes, but it still does not stop my internal cringe when I am asked about my art-making practice as an art educator.

Sometimes, when someone asks me what I make as an artist, I will say that I am a writer. I bake beautiful sweets that might be able to pass for some kind of work of art. But, deep in my heart, I don’t really think of those acts as art. I think of them as being a writer and being a baker, respectively. They are not being an artist. I need to come to terms with the fact that I don’t make art and that I look at it. Perhaps it is time to explore these feelings, maybe even in art therapy?