Is Art a Luxury?

Over on Scoutie Girl, Tara posed the question: Is Art a Luxury?

Immediately what came to my mind was the obvious art, paintings, photographs and other wall-hanging art. It probably came to mind first because we don't have any. That's right. Our walls are bare except for an old Ganesha mask that I fought to hang on the wall. "Fought" meaning I like having fun, colorful, interesting things covering the walls but Matt is more of a plain white, clean (boring) kind of person.

Then I moved on to art that needs a surface: sculptures, pottery, that sort of thing. We don't have too much of that either, but we also don't have too many surfaces to spare. Our lifestyle right now is that of "broke-busy-doing-what-we-can-with-what-we-have-college-students" who don't have much to do what we can with. I did put up some vintage cheese boxes in my studio recently and they are the perfect surfaces for some of my small elephant collection (the elephants are small, the collection...not so much).

And while thinking about all the other types of "art" I realized that art is everywhere, you don't have to spend bucket loads of your hard earned money on something that somebody else deems art. What is art to YOU? What do you find pretty? What interests you? Calms you? Makes you think? For me, its life. Plant life, animal life, roommate life, any kind of life. Life in pictures, life in story books, all kinds of life.

I don't think art is a luxury because its expensive, I think it is a luxury because you have to take the time to see it. Look for the art in the everyday, mundane things of your life and perhaps you won't feel so without.