On Art and Social Commentary

I find that I have an awful lot to say about the world on any given day. How I think people are stupid, WHY I think people are stupid, ways I think people can learn to shake their stupidity, etc. I talk about these things incessantly to anyone who will listen as though I'm the world's next Confucius or something but I never do anything about it. I just push around hot air. I also like to make art and have, for some time, been longing to make art for art's sake - art because I WANT to, not because it pays my bills. So why have I never considered an art project in which I make some sort of social commentary? Isn't that what "real" artists do? I mean, I guess Van Gogh was sort of a "paint whatever the hell I want" kind of guy but mostly, don't artists have something they're trying to say with their work? The good ones anyway... When does an artist transition from making art that is pretty to making art that is meaningful? Some have been doing it all their lives - throwing paint on the paper in some adolescent revolt against "the man" or something else that they only moderately understand at the age of 16. Some, like me, chose the technical route as a child in which you soak up as much info as possible on HOW to make the art in some kind of preparation for the "real" artistic process later on. Ok, so I know how to make art - but what now? I often say that although I have a job in my "major," I don't feel artistically satisfied. What will change that? A hobby? A new job? I think I need to find some answers first and foremost but since brooding over it in my mind hasn't really been supplying the answers, maybe it's time for action. That doesn't mean I'm going to up and quit my job - HAHA - no. But I think I really need to start saying no to some of these mind-numbing freelance projects and start working toward something. Something meaningful. Something that I can put in a portfolio and feel proud of regardless of someone else's opinion because it is totally mine and exists exactly in the way I intended it to.

Rereading this sort of makes me sound like Dr. Frankenstein. I doubt I'm going to make an oversized cadaver walk around town... but I am starting to feel like a corporate drone. An artist should never feel like a corporate drone. We are the anti-corporate-drone, right? We are the thinkers - the feelers - the doers. So why am I stuck in a routine that discourages all of that?

It's my choice. I choose to be where I am. I can choose to change it.