Art is Not a Verb: Why “Arting Around” Is Making Me Lose My Mind

Yeah, I gnashed my teeth when everyone began using “journal” as a verb, never mind that the OED  actually lists it as a transitive one. But I finally came around, more or less:  I mean, it makes sense to say, “I journalled,” instead of saying “I wrote/doodled/drew/collaged in my notebook/diary/journal/sketchbook/Book of Stuff.”
But “art” as a verb? I’ve got some real problems with that, and they have little to do with the word “art” itself. Because, really, that’s a whole nother thang I’m not even going to get into today.
No. What I want to grouse about today is the use of “art” in the sense of “I spent the evening arting around.” I’m hearing this a lot, and it drives me fucking nuts.
One reason is that I suspect—and I’m willing to bet I’m right on this one—it comes from “farting around,” as in, “I spent the evening farting around,” meaning I don’t think I did much of anything and am denigrating anything I DID do by pretending it was of little or no value. I was puttering, I was putzing, I was passing the time.
By using “art” in that context, it takes away any importance the word “art” might have for us—however we think of art in its many guises. We take art and make it less intimidating by turning it into a synonym for “fart”:  I art around. I fart around. I don’t take any of this seriously.
This is silliness in its ultimate form. And here’s a test for silliness:  if you can’t imagine any of the men in your life using the term except on the weekend when they’re at the club doing their Streisand impression, then there’s a pretty good chance it’s really silly. Not just a little silly, but really silly.
Here I do not mean “silly” in the good sense:  the sense of play and fun and nonsense. I mean “silly” in the sense of ridiculous and useless, like puffy hair bows on 40-year-old women.
[Now, I fully realize that a lot of women really LIKE anything that separates them from men and want to embrace all the things they can that help do that, including all manner of things that fit into that category of Things Men Don’t Use:  hair bows, stilettos, the word “precious” when not followed by the word “metal” or “mineral,”  lilac-scented personal deodorant spray, the term “panties” instead of the perfectly functional “underwear.” If you think using words and phrases that are so fluffy and silly that they make the rest of us grimace like we’ve just bitten into a piece of fruitcake and found a prune, well, then, go ahead. But we’re going to be over here using words we can all enjoy, like, well, read on.]
There are three perfectly good words we could use to describe what we do in our studios if we’re somehow loathe to call it “making art,” which is the logical choice. If, however, for whatever reason we don’t want to say, “I spent the evening making art,” we can say, instead:
~~”I spent the evening crafting.”
~~”I spent the evening playing.”
~~”I spent the evening working.”
(We could also say “experimenting,” “making stuff,” “doing stuff.”)
Crafting is a completely legitimate term, and it’s a completely legitimate activity. Think “fine craftsmanship.” Think the Arts and Crafts Movement.
{For discussions about art vs. craft, go here, here, here, or here, or any of a whole bunch of other places:  people talk (and argue) about this a LOT.]
Even better is using “play” to describe the imaginative experimentation many of us refer to when we talk about what we’re doing in our studios. We avoid the word “play,” though, because of its connotations of laziness, silliness, worthlessness—because we do not value play itself. Play is vital for everyone, from birth until death, but most of us ignore that. Lack of play is at the root of many of our problems, from boredom to poor health to loneliness. Someone reminded me the other day of a quote that was long taped to the mirror in my bathroom:
We don’t stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing.
I know this from personal experience:  I felt myself age after Maxwell, my cat, was gone. At first I thought it was grief, and it was that. But it was also that I wasn’t playing:  Maxwell believed that he and I were some other species, neither feline nor human, and he expected me to enjoy the same things he did. We had a wide variety of games we adopted over our 18 years together, many of them involving me down on my hands and knees either crawling behind furniture or hiding around doors. We wrestled, we rolled around. We bit each other. We played a lot, every day, and when that ended (the other cats are much too dignified for the sorts of play we loved), I felt myself growing old.
I still don’t have anyone to play with in the same way, but I try to make do, because I know that play is vital. There is nothing childish about it. There is no reason to be ashamed of saying, “I’m playing,” whether you were playing with an animal or with paper or fabric or clay.
And saying, “I spent the evening working”—what’s wrong with that? We believe that the only things we can call work are 1) things for which we are paid and 2) odious tasks we don’t want to do, like scrubbing the toilets. Even that we modify by calling it “housework.”
Here’s the deal:  work is a good thing. When I was working on the last book, I wrote about work, about how making art is work—the artists in the book are full-time working artists—and my editor suggested that I might try not to talk about work quite so much, as it would put people off. She was right, of course, although I don’t understand why that is true. Work is not a bad thing. Work is good. Whether it’s work for money, or physical labor, or intense experimentation, or doing something over and over to learn a craft, work is as important as play. I will never understand people who hate to work. I love to work. I like assignments and deadlines. I like physical work that makes me sweat and leaves me sore the next day. I like doing something over and over and over, perfecting my skills, working out the bugs, learning the possibilities. Saying that making art can be—and should be—work is not saying it’s not wonderful fun. If, for you, work and fun are mutually exclusive terms, perhaps you have some thinking to do.
So whatever you call what you do in your studio, whether your studio is your kitchen table or a completely refitted two-car garage, make sure the term you choose reflects the value you put on what you’re doing with your time. If you want to say you’re “arting around,” go ahead, but first stop and think about what that says about you and your time and the materials you use. Does it reflect respect for your talent and materials, or does it reflect that, “Aw, shucks, don’t take me seriously” mentality that holds so many of us back from realizing the infinite possibilities within us? There’s nothing wrong with taking our talents seriously, just as there’s nothing wrong with working hard and playing every chance we get. If you do it right, you won’t be able to tell the difference.