I saw a poster at the craft store the other day that read:
“Why be pretty when you can be art?”
This question bounced around in my head for days like a rubber ball,
Leaving more questions in its wake that kept me up at night like strong coffee:
“If I am pretty, am I not art?”
“If I am art, am I not pretty?”
“Is art not pretty?”
Then the bouncing stopped and I realized
That the last word I would use to describe art is pretty.

I would call the intricate brush strokes I can see on a painting only when my nose is almost flat against the canvas graceful, not pretty.
I would call the eerily calming tone of that street-corner-singer’s voice that dots my skin with tiny goose bumps beautiful, not pretty.
I would call the genius cinematography of that indie movie I watched illegally online that makes my head spin with light and movement and stillness all at once mind-blowing, not pretty.
Because art is not pretty,
It’s as simple and complicated as that.

It is complicated because art is not definable.
It does not occupy a small space in your brain,
Because art transcends walls and borders
It cannot be crammed into the corner of your mind;
Your head would explode, leaving art and creativity splattered on the walls and ceilings.
And if you ask two people to think of art they might think of two opposite things,
Or they might think of the same thing,
Or they might think of everything in the world.
And that is the definition of art: It cannot be defined.
It is infinite.

There is art in the way a scientist scribbles numbers on a chalk board at two in the morning,
Too enthralled with the sunset inside his test tube to even think about sleeping.
There is art in the way cigarette smoke and warm breath and subway fumes are all visible on cold, late November mornings in New York City,
Swirling and dancing together in the frigid air.
And there is art in the way his strong fingers interlace with your thin ones covered in rings and both your knuckles turn white as bone.
You’re holding on to each other tight so there’s no room for the sugar sweet young love to slip away.

But am I art?
If I lay on the floor of The MoMA am I art?
If the drawing students at the local community college outline my body in charcoal on the smudged pages of their notebooks, am I art?
Do I need to be copied onto a canvas to be art?
I hear the whispers from the corners of my bedroom,
I hear the whispers from the tall grass in the park,
I hear the whispers from the deepest depth of my brain,
And they’re all whispering: “No”.
No, I do not need to be copied onto a canvas to be art.
No, I do not need to be penciled in and erased and penciled in again to be art.
No, I do not need to be outlined with black paint to be art, it would just cover up the best parts of me.
I can be the misshapen pot that dried to fast in the midday sun, fragile but strong with thick sides and drip-drop glaze,
I am not perfectly trimmed or intricately painted,
I am not perfect and neither is art.

But I can make you laugh and cry like art.
I can make you scream and shout with frustration and I can make you “ah-ha” when you finally figure me out.
Like graffiti I am not always wanted.
Like modern art I am not always understood but if you think anyone could do that, then why didn’t you?
Sometimes I am millions of dollars like an exhibit at the Met
Sometimes I am as thrifty as the macaroni art on a proud mother’s refrigerator.
Either way, I can make you feel something.
And that is why I am art.

You can be art.
You are a wall mural and a poem and a landscape photograph all at the same time.
And you make people feel something, too.
You make your mother proud of the beautiful work of art you’ve become,
And you make your friends laugh with as much sarcasm and wit as a well crafted cartoon.
But you make yourself feel things, too.
You make yourself sad sometimes because you don’t always feel like art.
You don’t always think you look the part of art.
But art is not always wire rimmed glasses and paint under your finger nails and half-shaved heads.
You do not have to wear all black to be art and you do not have to wear every single color on a watercolor palate to be art.
Because Picasso was sad once too,
And he loved subdued blues just as much as you do.
But remember that pink is always just around the corner.