Can You Spot an Artist?

They are everywhere. You probably have them growing up in your home right now.

I made and packed my kids’ school lunches almost every day – kindergarten through senior year in high school. (Yes, I know they were old enough to make and pack their own lunches when they turned 10 probably, but it was one more way I could “touch” them with an act of service – my love language – every day).

Anyway, I would wrap their sandwiches, or cold pizza in tinfoil on many days.

The picture of the tinfoil rose shown above was one of dozens of tinfoil creations that came home in my son’s lunchbox – when he was in elementary school. I still have this rose, sitting on my desk in my office. I suppose it's 10 or 11 years old now.

We were raising a creative – an artist. It was obvious – every day. He was a creator in every sense of the word. As a child, he made wallets out of playing cards; duck tape purses and shoes; water color paintings; oil paintings; short films with his friends, and so on and so on.

He has the soul of an artist.

My prayer is that he never yields to the resistance to stop creating.

“Art is what we call...

the thing an artist does.

It's not the medium or the oil or the price or whether it hangs on a wall or you eat it. What matters, what makes it art, is that the person who made it overcame the resistance, ignored the voice of doubt and made something worth making. Something risky. Something human.

Art is not in the eye of the beholder. It's in the soul of the artist.”

(From Seth Godin’s blog, 2/18/11, http://www.sethgodin.com/sg/)