“You are studying art? Hope you have something to fall back on”
Anyone studying a creative field has encountered discouraging resistance. However, creative people are the driving force behind the clothes you wear, the car you drive, the apps on your phone, the songs on the radio, the design of your fork, the house you live in and the movies you watch. It is the artists that make life as you know it possible. Is art competitive? Sure. But competition is essential in making people raise their game and achieve their highest potential.
This past month, I was honored to judge the Student Artist Showcase for the Beaux Arts Society supporting the Lowe Art Museum at the University of Miami. Poring over 400 submissions was daunting. But in doing so, certain themes emerged including noting artists who stood out as “professional” even at an early age. Across genres, high school and middle school artists showed skills that, given proper encouragement, will blossom into promising careers. Not all will be “artists” in the traditional sense. But many will surely be “in the arts”. When I was in high school and college, I recognized my peers to be more skilled, creative, and innovative than I was. But, I combined varied skills in writing, business acumen and art background into a 27 year long career in fine art sales.
Steve Jobs, the late co-founder of Apple, once said, “It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough — it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our hearts sing.”
Many of the artists we saw will work for big companies like Disney. Others for small design firms. Still others still will start companies and create technologies that have not been imagined yet because they will have honed the skill of creativity itself. So, before you start discouraging an arts education, think about what society would be without art.
As former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said, “Arts education is essential to stimulating the creativity and innovation that will prove critical to young Americans competing in a global economy.”
The Earth without Art is just Eh ~Demetri Martin
