"We must recognize that excellence and quality are a reflection of how we feel about ourselves and about life and about God. If we don’t care much about these basic things, then such not caring carries over into the work we do, and our work becomes shabby and shoddy.

Real craftsmanship, regardless of the skill involved, reflects real caring, and real caring reflects our attitude about ourselves, about our fellowmen, and about life." (source)

I've been thinking a lot lately about my art and why I do art and what I hope to do with my art. I feel somewhat like an anomaly in the craziness that is currently the art world, I may not be, but flipping through the pages of Art in America or Art News, etc. I don't see a whole lot that I like or that I want to be like.
I've probably talked about this before but I went to BYU where I was lucky enough to study art with Wulf Barsch. I really don't know that I would have graduated in art if I hadn't been lucky enough to have a class with Wulf my first semester, I remember freshmen orientation and some of my art generals, there were long and heated debates about the definition of art, I learned about people like Jackson Pollock.
I'll be honest, I didn't really know what it was I was trying to do going into my art major, I knew that when I was little I'd wanted to be an artist, when I applied for college I had the plan to be an English major with a minor in art, my plan was to write and illustrate children's books. I hated my senior year of English, the plan changed to majoring in art and minoring in English. I threw together my application for BYU's art program in about two weeks, happily my dad could take pictures for slides and my art teacher rounded up all my art so I could have a portfolio. I guess what I'm trying to say here, is that who I was going into the program changed while I was in it? I said before that I don't know that I would have stayed in the art program if I hadn't had classes with Wulf and that's true, I think going in I didn't really know what was possible, what I could be or find in an art major, I didn't love a lot of what I found with other teachers and classes in the art department. Wulf was and is very different from the majority of the faculty and I learned things from Wulf that I never would have heard about from other teachers.

Wulf had a clear and precise definition of what art was: Art is craftsmanship plus inspiration.

I didn't realize when I started this post, just how long it would turn out to be. I think we'll call this part one and then to be continued.
PS the picture above is a piece of Wulf's that's currently at the Springville museum.