To Be Allowed to Keep Making Art, Keep Making Art

8 min readFeb 27, 2023

You need to share your art with the world, or it may forget what art really is.

In a recent mentor group meeting, one of the members noted they were feeling anxious and on edge and made the analogy to “long covid” which is what happens to some who have had the unfortunate luck to get it. It is a feeling of disinterest, a slowing of the mental acuity necessary to do many of the things we once took for granted.

But we eventually get it all back. In my case, it took about seven weeks before I could really concentrate for an extended period of time. Going into ‘flow’ was something I was well acquainted with, and doing so became impossible for nearly two months.

Perhaps Mark was closer to the truth than he thought. Things and situations that were once normal seem to be slightly off-kilter. It is like a general fog has drifted over some parts of the landscape.

Sure, there are many exciting things going on. I am blistering with work these days, and relish the few moments when I can just create something for myself.

But things have changed.
Blog comments are nearly impossible to get.
Twitter is becoming less of a cesspool, but a cesspool it remains.
IG is becoming boring. Well, even more boring than it was.
Facebook is less ‘fun’, and people are tiptoeing around like they are afraid of the next… whatever.

Add to this subtle downturn the fear-porn mongers of “AI is going to eliminate you”, and “there is no hope”, and “we’re all gonna diiiiiiiiie….”

You know, like this guy:

Yeah, psycho dude, it may be better for you to sit this one out.

Wee, here’s the thing. We are artists. We make order out of chaos.

Whether it is the written word, paints, music, or any sort of art, the artist puts it into a context where it can be understood — if even to only themselves.

My music teacher thought I was from another planet with my atonal sound sculptures, although they made perfect sense to me.

But that is what we do. Look for some sort of order to our work, even though it may seem strange to others when they see what we come up with.

When the camera goes in front of our faces, we want to put what we want in the frame before us. We chose that frame, which is both inclusive and exclusive. This is why we spend so much time learning and getting better at composition.

What to leave in.

What to leave out.

And now we live in a chaotic world.

I guess it could be argued that we have seen more chaotic times. And maybe that is true, but the chaos didn’t come at you at a thousand miles an hour with little to no preparation.

Tech has made it pervasive, and normal, to be worried about every goddamn thing.

Institutions that were once trusted to give us a semblance of order have, one after another, failed. Trust in every part of our society has been eroded by the incessant lying of nearly everyone in charge of nearly everything.

Go this way, no — go that way — no, you idiot, go this way.

Leaders who don't lead, a public that has lost any interest it once had, and the creative desperately trying to create in the midst of chaos.

And that is hard for artists, and probably most regular folk, to live with.

But it is exactly why we absolutely must continue to create. We must turn our backs to the naysayers, ignore the wretched and corrupt gatekeepers, and mock those who have failed us by making more and more and more art.

There simply is no other way.

Leaves caught in the iron, Phoenix, AZ photo by the author.

This world is but a canvas to our imagination.

Henry David Thoreau said that.

(And Grammerly doesn’t like it. It wants to ‘fix’ the quote to be …‘canvas for our’… instead of how it was written by a great author.)

Because “rules”.

Rules and chaos. Great companions and the enemy of all that is creative.

“You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.”
–Maya Angelou

(She’s right, of course.
And Grammerly wanted to fix that one as well. Heh.)

And we need to use up more of our creativity in order to get even more.

Stagnation equals death in art, and there is too damn much stagnation going on out there.

Complacency is stagnation on life support.

We all need to shake off the complacency, get mad about how art is being treated, and fight back a bit. Or even a lot.

The people we thought would help us maintain our artistic integrity have, for the most part, abandoned us in order to maintain their tech-bro lifestyles.

A website called ArtStation has been battling its own users over the use of Stable Diffusion imagery being allowed to mix with their art. ArtStation could easily add a “This is made by AI” tag to AI output, but they are siding with the purveyors of this fake AF stuff over the real makers of art.

Sad, but the artists are fighting back.

Hard.

“Artists should be free to decide how their art is used and we don’t want to become a gatekeeper, with site terms that stifle AI research and commercialization,” ArtStation wrote on its “Use of A.I. Software” page. “Choosing not to use the tag leaves copyright law to govern whether or not the artwork was fairly used.”
— ArtStation

Essentially telling the real artists that the AI stuff has the possibility of making them a lot of money, and even more importantly, it lets them virtue signal to the tech bros that they are on board with anything that comes down the pike because MOOLAH, baby!

And the artists who make their livelihood there are fighting back with memes, badges, medallions, and other artful ways to show their work is NOT created by a heartless and uncreative predictive model computation.

These platforms, which really never did honestly care about artists or art, will give way to platforms that are explicitly non-AI artists.

You know — the kind that struggles with meaning, try to invoke a response, make something that challenges the viewer, or simply reminds those who look at their art of the beauty in the world. The creative beings who are never satisfied with mediocrity, and create again and again and again until they have it just right. And even then, they would want another bite at the apple to make it better.

And this alliance of real artists is actually going to be good for our work, and how we make a living. Or even just make something for ourselves.

On Friday, February 24, the US Copyright office won the right to ban copyright on AI-created imagery. This is terrific news. And a really big deal.

Their argument is that the only art that can be copyrighted is that which is human-created. Sorry, “Sydney”, you gotta get real first.

Any “art” you see that you like and was created by AI may now be available for you to simply snatch and use. The work is not copyrighted and cannot be trademarked because of the lack of that copyright.

It is, at least the way I see it, wide open for appropriation down to the pixel.

PLEASE NOTE I AM NOT ADVOCATING FOR ANYONE TO DO THIS.

That would be wrong, although — apparently — not illegal. I am simply pointing out that this will deter a lot of commercial applications as well as fine art and even editorial use. Few clients are going to commission you for work they cannot copyright.

So, no, we humanistic creators have a bit more time coming to us.

Now we have to take that time and make photographs as often and as much as we can. We need to paint, write, compose, sculpt, design so much that the output will astound even those who are used to being impressed.

Be so good they can’t ignore you.
— Steve Martin

We have a sort of duty, you see, to perpetuate human-made art before ol’ ‘Sydney’ takes over the court system and gives herself a reprieve that cannot be redone. Sydney is the name of Google’s AI machine. And if that is interesting, know this: it doesn’t like the name.

Seriously.

Yesterday (February 25, 2023) my bud Jerry and I walked around the Roosevelt area of downtown Phoenix. And we made photographs of the area that gave me a real smile. None of them are going to be lifetime achievement imagery, and that’s OK. I made something.

And I made at least four images that I really like.

That is the only way we can create order from chaos, folks. Take your camera and make some images tomorrow. Anything. It’s all good.

YOU made it, and YOU get to claim the work as your very own.

And nothing and nobody can take that work from you.

I’d love it if you would share with me what you make this week. Just post a note and tell me, “I made 30 photos, Don.” Or perhaps, “I finally started my Blurb book this week”, or “I have three sketches to paint.” If you write music, sculpt, draw, collage, paint eyes on river rocks and put them on the path by my home — whatever you do.

Do it today if you can, tomorrow for sure.

No excuses.

That is the way we fight for the right to make our own art — and share it with the world.

BTW, here is one of the images from yesterday.