Considering the reach this blog has,  one person – me, this can be a private conversation.

I don’t know if others cycle through this process, but it’s been something I’ve returned to again and again.

It has to do with the value of what I bring to the planet.

As a kid I marveled at what I had been able to learn and do, but felt little satisfaction that what I returned to my society exceeded what I took out.  Hard work and good quality labor didn’t bring that satisfaction. That was just something that one did, just a minimum standard.

There was satisfaction in my interactions with people when the other party was elevated or solved a problem they’d been wrestling with. That may have been why my work as a Certified Nursing Aid in a nursing home was one of the more satisfying jobs up till then. The pay was terrible and I had family responsibilities so it only lasted a year.

As an employee I churned out reliable excellent work year after year. When I could do it, I competed with my fellow workers,  intent on besting both their quality and quantity. Occasionally a guy would come along whose work was flawless and beautiful and who I couldn’t out do. Most of my advantage only was the result of the general attitude that hourly workers sometimes have that causes them not to excel so much as to just keep from getting fired.

It’s not hard to outshine the person who calls in sick as often as the rules allow, who shows up late and leaves early, and who does as little work in as poor a quality as will keep them on the payroll.

It’s impossible to compete on equal ground with relatives of management, offspring of the owner, protected classes, quota bait, unprincipled climbers, and the various types of untouchables who know they can not be fired or demoted or managed because of some political advantage.

Head to head on even ground, I usually fared well whoever I competed with.

That helped, but didn’t solve the problem.

I still felt I wasn’t making a unique contribution.

As  a creative, I found a voice. Speaking a language with potentially greater power than words, art can stir souls to be better.

Even as I’ve broken through quality barriers and improved on my own ability to apply imagery to persuasion, I’ve continued to doubt that any real good is coming from the effort.

It is true that none of the artists who inspire me have any idea that I exist, or care. So their reach extends beyond what they know or knew. That can happen still. Gold that sits unused, not found, or unseen is still gold. But it does no good. On the other hand, if all gold were known, none would be sought because it would all be known.  I think there has never been a time when someone wasn’t on the hunt to find more either to mine or plunder. To be found, it must first exist.

By this line of thinking, it makes sense to do what I do and let the art find it’s place. Those who would esteem it will seek it out.

The best competition of all competition is when one competes with self, to outdo previous attainments and exceed previous benchmarks and improve one’s positive reach.

It’s certainly risky to base the whole assessment of the value of the enterprise on the reactions of others. On the other hand why would anyone stand up to notice the unheralded? The fir in a forest may be grand indeed, but hikers walk past and move on with a nod of recognition at most. When that same tree is cut and milled it may feed families and go on to help employ craftsman, artisans, and  such before it ends up protecting property or shielding people from weather or improving lives after being shaped into any number of useful things. It becomes a commodity.

Yesterday I discovered D. H. Chiparus who was an art deco sculpture of renown. His work is generally superior and the prices his pieces fetch acknowledge that. In a sense, those have become something of a commodity. An investment commodity. Many of them are intrinsically beautiful.

The idea that my work may not have value and may not ever be of value to others continues to vex me. It should be enough that I love the pieces I’ve createdand that I think they have merit. The question I’ve had has to do with whether it is enough that the artist esteems his work. If it means nothing to anyone else, then it’s value evaporates with the expiration of the artist. In that case, what was the point? If the point of life is to have joy, that still may be enough to justify the work but it gives nothing to society generally unless it later brings joy to others.

This actually makes no sense on analysis. The hamburger and fries that satisfy some one at lunch only satisfy that one person that one time and then they are gone, but that hardly makes them not worth making. I’m glad they’re there.

Unlike food, but like gold, art can sit unnoticed for generations and then find it’s adoring owner.

In my heart I believe in my work, but my intellectual brain says it’s only my personal indulgence that will never pay it’s way. One of these outlooks has to prevail. The intellectual view destroys the desire and production and thus fulfills it’s own dismal prophesy. The artist in me just wants to get to work because I’ve seen the unpainted images, but it waits in the wings for permission from the intellectual mind.

Now I see the problem.