A few weeks ago, I was with a friend and we wandered into an art studio that was open. Honestly, we thought it might be an antique shop at first, but it was too well-organized and nothing had price tags.

Turns out, it was a photographer's studio, and a really GREAT photographer at that.

However, when we asked what he did, he said “Well, I don’t do what I thought I’d be doing.”

Originally he wanted to take pictures of flowers and butterflies, but in art school, someone told him "That's not art!"

And he believed them.

Now he takes truly amazing photos of children. Very stylized, humorous, so character-y that they almost look like Norman Rockwell paintings.

But honestly, I wanted to ask, "Why can't you do both???"

Obviously, he's found a cash cow in taking really great artsy photos of kids at Christmas and Easter. As an artist, I get it, not everyone is lucky enough to make a living solely doing what they love. Not everyone finds a cash cow they can milk, either.

So SURELY he could indulge his own interests a bit?? No need to sacrifice the sacred bovine of wealth--but why not add a miniature donkey, some chickens, and a llama to the menagerie?

Then today, at the High Museum of Art with another friend, I thought of that photographer as we walked through an exhibit by South Korean artist Kim Chong Hak, who paints mainly...flowers and butterflies!

I don’t know about you, but this makes me joyful AF

Someone apparently forgot to send him the memo that those aren't "real" art. Or maybe he just chose not to hear them.

Because who’s to say that flowers and butterflies aren’t art? Van Gogh and Monet are famous for their sunflowers and their waterlilies.

The Victorians had a secret symbolic language of flowers. Plants and flowers have powerful meanings. Butterflies are glorious symbols of change, transformation, and resilience. If art is in the meaning we bring to something we create, then anything, and I mean ANYTHING, can be art.

I took this photo, and no one can convince me it isn’t art.

A prayer or a magic spell isn’t in the words themselves, but the intention behind them. I believe it is so with art as well.

Creating art can be as simple as creating something beautiful and decorative to share with the world, as cathartic as expressing our emotions in physical form, or as revolutionary as making work that provokes thought, spreads political and social ideas, and critiques the powers that be.

I loved this plaque from the exhibit today, particularly the part towards the bottom. Kim knew the establishment might not take him seriously as an artist because of his choice of subject, yet he did anyways. His choice was a transgressive one.

Maybe it shouldn’t be transgressive to do work traditionally seen as “feminine” but we’ll keep working on that

Who gets to say what is art?

Another artist whose art is featured prominently at the museum is Howard Finster, a preacher, repairman, inventor and family man who, after having an experience created more than 46,000 works of art in his lifetime. FORTY-SIX THOUSAND!!!

Despite being extremely prolific, Finster considered “outsider art,” “naive art,” and “folk art,” (which all sound like really elitist ways of saying that someone isn’t actually very good).

Or perhaps they just judged him because he was creating art from the trash that he found on his land (which used to be a literal dump—see the above photo).

But no one can argue that he had a style, a point of view, and a message to get across.

Another example: The Wegner Grotto. I grew up passing “The Glass Church” (as we called it) on the way to my grandparents’ house.

The church and all of the art in the grotto were created by a German immigrant couple, who recreated their wedding cake, the ship they arrived on, and more, out of concrete and bits of broken glass.

Is it high art?

No.

Do I love it more than any Monet?

You betcha!

Deer at Dusk, 2021
Acrylic paint, sawblade
Deb Allen

When my Aunt Debby isn’t hunting or gardening, she quilts and she paints deer on old barn boards and saw blades. She wasn’t taught to paint. She just does.

My grandmother used to knit, and embroider, and create all sorts of things to take to the fair.

My Aunt Pat weaves, and my Uncle Dan created this xylophone from wood.

Xylophone, 2016
Wood, rope, and plastic hose
Dan Smith

I love what Finster and the Wegners represent, because I believe we all have the power of creation within us. We all have things that inspire us and things we want to say.

Maybe it would be better if more of us, like Finster, believed that God had sent us a message to share our art and message with the world. Maybe if we all truly believed we were doing the Lord’s work, we’d stop holding back all of the gifts we have inside us.

Do you have gifts within you that you are holding back from sharing with the world?

Creative curiosities that have gone unexplored because someone else told you it wasn’t worth it?

Give yourself permission. Because you don’t need anyone else’s.

Give Yourself Permission (aka The Flower Rebellion)

“No Wrong Choices”