How Artists Influence Communities: Beyond Business

Art is not just what is displayed in galleries, events, or online stores. The business of making art is to manage the resources to keep creating. Creation itself has limitations based on what is available to work with that can be this illusory barrier of profession versus hobby.

There is an industry standard for branding art to place a value on its meaning. But artistic brand is a natural culmination of the styles, techniques, and energy incorporated by the artist. So how does someone decide what art means? What makes something art? Is it that feeling when What a Wonderful World should be playing in the background?

“Beauty is not a quality in people or in objects themselves. It exists in the mind that perceives those objects, and each mind perceives beauty differently. To seek real beauty, in some absolute sense, is pointless. Where one person sees beauty, another may even see the opposite. For this reason, we all ought to accept our own perceptions of who or what is beautiful, and not be influenced by the perceptions of others.”

- Adapted from David Hume, Of the Standard of Taste

“Once in a while you can get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right”

- Grateful Dead, Scarlet Begonias

Art is a reflection of what people see in their own world. Creators are everyone: the startup on social media funding their vision, the kid making a sand castle, the chef plating, the football player scoring a touchdown, the people doing anything to make just one moment a better time. Art is the most personalized gift of all, because beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Links:

What a Wonderful World by Louis Armstrong

Hume’s Aesthetics

Scarlet Begonias by Grateful Dead

Somewhere Over the Rainbow Israel Kamakawiwo’ole

Photo from Deaf Child 5 Year Anniversary