Learn to Know Me By That Name

Every so often it's good to see yourself through someone else's eyes.  I don't know why that is.  But it seems that when we look at ourselves too close in for too long, our eyes get all out of focus and our heads start to spin out funhouse stories of ourselves.  

This afternoon as a change of pace from writing and beating myself up about not writing more.  I have been carving stamps for letterboxing.  A new series based on Narnia.  I am reading an insane amount of CS Lewis right now (not limited to Narnia) and working the pieces gives my brain time to process some of the headier philosophical works.  

I view these stamps as toss offs.  These are just part of my nutjob hobby.  They go into Tupperware or camo duct tape covered bags and live outside.  Some will disappear, chewed up by wild critters or thrown out as trash by well-meaning muggles or noxers (non-boxers) as they are sometimes known.  

I took a break, posted a FB status update and thought why not throw in a photo of the stamps.  What I didn't expect was for someone to call these hobby pieces Art.  Art?  Rreally?  But making Art would have required me to dig out the paints and paper or at least the really cool and smeary drawing pencils I like, which I didn't do.    Art would lead a cushy life lived inside under glass, not thrown into a bush.  

I stopped myself right about there and looked at what I had been saying.  Dismissing this as less than.  YIKES!  Let's back the train up.  Maybe if I stopped thinking about Art and started thinking about art, I would see that most of my life is about making art.   I make art with my words.  I make art with relationships.  Hell I even do a very artsy load of laundry.  And yes, on some days I make art in the form of little rubber stamps that I share with other people just for the thrill of it.