TO BE AN ARTIST

I will never forget the first time I called myself an artist. A girlfriend had talked me into taking several of my Coffee Pot People to a craft sale she was participating in. I was near one of the Coffee Pot People, some time after the show started, when a woman turned to me and said, "Oh, are you the artist?"

I calmly smiled and said, "Yes, I am," but let me tell you, inside I was doing that whole, "I'm ready for my close-up" thing, fingertips to the center of my chest, gaze lifted and off to the side, and mentally intoning, Why, yes. Yes. I am.

That was some years ago, but it still makes me happy just thinking I'm an artist, and working as one. Granted, I'm no Picasso, or Rembrandt. No. I just like to make things.

But I was thinking tonight of what it means to me, to say I'm artist. It's very liberating. People seem to accept that you might be just a bit out of the norm.

I can paint my kitchen floor with polka dots,


or wear a monster face on the knee of my jeans, or earrings that don't match.


I can stick a dismembered doll arm in a flower pot, so it looks like the rest of the body is there, but buried. It's okay--I'm an artist!


Of all the things being an artist might mean, that to me is the most wonderful. To be who I am, a kind of offbeat, sometimes macabre, almost always happy individual.

And you. Are you an artist? What does it mean to you?