Writing Club: Arts Story

For the last prompt in my newspaper series, the prompt was to choose an element from a newspaper that’s not necessarily a news story. People wrote everything from obituaries to classifieds to advertisements, sports stories, crime, and reviews.

I went with an arts story, on a topic that I feel passionate about. I feel like I can write more on this topic but that it might become a rant so I ended it here. This project has become cathartic. Let me know your thoughts on making art outside of the digital space.

Importance of Making Physical Art 

By: L. McGee

We spend a lot of time staring at screens. I’m typing this on a laptop now but only because it is the best way to get this idea across or I could make short form content but that would include video editing that would probably get lost in the mass of videos in the doomscroll. I’ll stick to words. We need to step away, we need to make things with our hands. We need to make bad art because bad, unskilled, rough, starter art is the way to becoming good at something. Yes, it takes time but nothing is wonderful created in a day. It always takes time.

Art rewires our brain. Art, no matter the quality, demonstrates to ourselves that we can do things, that we can make things that exist in the physical world. We can hide that art away or we can show it off but it exists because we willed it and worked it into creation. 

When I say physical art I initially meant a drawing, a painting, building something, fabric arts, and the like. Arts that would leave you with physical proof that you created something with your own hands. However, I’m going to expand this definition: music, a good meal shared with loved ones. Things that are temporary but no less meaningful for their fleetingness. 

Humans are meant to move, to create, to learn not to be sedentary creatures. We are meant to explore the depths of the oceans and the vastness of the universe, not this drudgery. So go out there and make mistakes in your art, do it wrong. Take that encouragement and do it again. You can find the beauty, sharpen your mind. Do it again and again and again until you get it right and while you do so, encourage others to go and create their own bit of beauty. Step away from the ease of AI. Do the hard things.      

I included these photos to show that I do my best to do the hard things. Riding horses and mules betters my skills and theirs. The Denton Writing Club has published two zines and is working on a third. Film photography is mostly stored as digital images but the shot limit and the fickleness of film makes it a physical art and having to set up the shots makes you work slowly. No, I didn’t build all of the bookshelf but I helped my husband and in-laws with the work. I have made watercolor paint and used it. Yes, I read a lot, yes I still doomscroll but I’m trying. How about you?

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