Artist vs "Bohemian"

MY FIRST POST to The Conversation, the discussion forum at the online home of the Chicago alt-media/art/activism collective, Lumpen, encapsulates my whole philosophy about art -- and the difference between making art and fitting into some kind of real or imagined art-tribe or art-lifestyle.

By way of context, the thread was about the perceived overcommercialization of the Around the Coyote art festival -- a mainstay of Chicago's Wicker Park/Bucktown neighborhood, but also a perceived driving force in the gentrification that had eventually driven all the poor artists out. If you're at all interested in, or involved in, the arts in Chicago,you've probably read all about it, heard all about it, and talked all about it too. Ironically enough, Lumpen itself had been part of the force inexorably driving the very gentrification being deplored. Eventually, it got around to a question of  some imagined clash between the forces of "real art" versus "commercialized art" and I had finally had enough. I wrote:

hey kids
This is my first post in the conversayshun, but I never like to get bogged down with introductions and shit like that.

So anyway, my take on ATC and Chicago art in general, from one who is not a Wick/town scenester. I like what the guy said about "artists" making speeches. I'd just rather that artists would make art and leave the speechifying to others.

I am a born creative, and spent the first half of my life as an obsessive, self-taught visual artist (before veering over into writing and music). Most of the art I drew or painted could not be classed as underground/revolutionary/subversive/anarchist or what have you. However, that doesn't make it "not art" any more than the CSO are "not musicians" simply because they play classical music. To call stuff that people have put their heart and soul and time into "not real art" IMO is, to incredibly elitist and narrow and perhaps shows that one has done too much time in art school and not enough time actually making stuff. People who make art are artists.

There are all kinds of art for all kinds of people. That's one of the nice things about living in a sorta-free country. You have choice. There is lowbrow and highbrow and everything in between. Steven Spielberg is an artist, whatever you might think of his choices and his money. However unfortunate this may be in your opinion, Thomas Kincade is also an artist. Charles M. Schulz (who was my first art teacher, via dozens of Peanuts books) was an artist. Mariah Carey is a musical artist, despite her poor choices of songs to record. Etc.

Artist and bohemian are not one and the same. There are lots of artists who live semi-normal lives and lots of bohemians calling themselves "artists" who have never developed any sort of craft, except maybe going to openings and parties.

That said, I generally can't afford ATC except for the smattering of free shows. (I've seen some interesting performance art there but that's it) Last year during ATC I was actually at an alternative space, the Glamour of War 9/11 show at Ken Hirte's Gallery Chicago, a couple miles down Milwaukee from the Coyote. GC sorta had their own mini-festival, I invited some friends (including Sharkula), and as far as I'm concerned, it kicked all forms of @$$.

Don't get me wrong, I don't like blandness either (though blandness is impossible to define -- one man's blandness is another's bliss). But I like hipper-than-thouness even less. Live and let live.