making art vs. living art

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the difference between a person who lives a creative life and one who actively creates art. What is the difference between these individuals? Are they sometimes the same person who shifts back and forth - sometimes caught up in specific ideas that result in a product while other times going about their lives without much of an end product, but brain still going through the same processes?

The reason I wonder this is because much of the way I problem solve and evaluate the things I see in the world is through the same vision that I create artwork. To be clear, I haven’t made much art over the last several years, besides a bout here and there, but I still feel like my brain processes the same way. Just as before, I always have my best ideas in that twilight between wake and sleep – striving to allow myself to continue the thought without interruption, always worried that in the morning, pieces will be lost.

Another question: who is qualified to discern what is art and what isn’t? When pondering this, I can’t help but think of a purely comedic response, always coming up with the same answer: David Sedaris. From a piece called “Twelve Moments in the Life of the Artist” from Me Talk Pretty One Day, Sedaris, after being rejected from the traditional art world, falls in with some other art school students keen on conceptual art and crystal meth. Making such references to their art including dragging a heavy cash register through the forest, balling up socks on a hardwood floor, and lying in a fetal position before our national monuments, Sedaris compares the difference between “making art” and “living art”. I must note here that he does contribute many of his views at the time to his excessive use of speed and the lack of self-consciousness he felt while on it. While I don’t personally view these concepts as art, in general, it does raise a funny if not real question about where one might draw this elusive line.