Day 506: Random thoughts about art

This post is dedicated to my long-time friend, Deb, whose birthday it is today.

I’ve chosen quite a risky topic, this morning. Why risky?  (1) Art is a BIG topic and (2) this is the first morning, in over a month, that I have to be at work by 9 AM.¹

So let’s see if I can pull this off.

I just went to my friend, Google, for some initial help in composing this post. I asked, “What is art?” and here is Google’s first line of response to my plea:

About 3,430,000,000 results (0.41 seconds)

No matter what you think about (1) numbers and (2) Google, you have to agree: That’s a lot of results, really fast.

NOW where do we go, with over THREE BILLION choices?

Let’s take the very next response, from Google:

art

noun
1.
the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.
“the art of the Renaissance”
synonyms: fine art, artwork
works produced by human creative skill and imagination.
“his collection of modern art”
synonyms: fine art, artwork More
creative activity resulting in the production of paintings, drawings, or sculpture.
“she’s good at art”
2.
the various branches of creative activity, such as painting, music, literature, and dance.
“the visual arts”

I think Google gave us a good enough definition, to start. What do you think?

For the next random thought about art, let’s look closer to home. By “closer to home,” I mean, what have I written about art, in this blog?

When I search all my posts for the word “art,” 419 of them came up.  That’s a BIG percentage of all the posts I’ve written.  To be precise, 82.970297% of the posts I’ve written include “art” in some way (at least, according to WordPress search).

However, only two of my posts include the word “art” in the title:

Day 290: The Healing Power of Art

Day 45: Mistakes, where art thou sting?

What does that tell us?  Well, for one thing, there’s more than one meaning of the word “art.”

NOW what do I do?  I can think of SO many places to go next, in this post.

Perhaps, this, which I found at my office, yesterday, will help guide me:

Yes, that’s helpful, but WHICH next step?

I could ask you what you think art is — including your favorite pieces of art.

I could point out that even in Day 45 — a post where the word “art” is just the archaic form of “is/are” — my tags included musical artists Bernard Hermann and John Williams.

I could ask you to complete this sentence: One person’s art is another person’s ____.²

I could write about my friend Deb, who:

1. is having a birthday today,
2. is a blown-glass artist,
3. appears in Day 486: May Day! May Day!, and
4. is having a reaction, which I can only imagine, to #2, above.

Here’s the photo from that post, showing Deb and her blue vase, which she brought as a gift to me that day:

Eeeek!  Look at the time!

Actually, that’s not the time.  That’s something I saw, yesterday evening, at a local Art Center/Elementary School.³

But I do need to wrap up this post, people, and get to work. Before I do, here are more photos I took yesterday, at that same location:

I have a few more pieces of art to show you, before I conclude. Earlier yesterday, another long-time friend, Craig (whom I wrote about last week, in Day 500: Momentous), texted me these photos from the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA):

It’s all art, to me.

Thanks to Deb, Craig, friends that are long-time, medium-time, or short-time, Art Centers, elementary schools,  the MFA,  artists and art-appreciators everywhere, and to you — of course! — for visiting here, today.

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1 Because this is the first week I’ve returned to work after an extended illness.

2 This fill-in-the-blank suggestion is inspired by the saying “One man’s meat is another man’s poison” (and George S. Kaufman‘s excellent pun, “One man’s Mede is another man’s Persian”).

3 Where my son was auditioning for a play.