“The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.” --Kurt Vonnegut

Art is the first thing to fall off our radar as we grow up, as we begin to navigate our adult worlds. Talented kids pick standard majors because they are told that they’ll “never make a living in the arts”. They are told there are no jobs. They are told it’s too hard. They are wrong.

Okay they aren’t wrong, it is hard to make a living in the arts. It’s also hard to make a living in the sciences. It’s hard to make a living as a business administration major in a world full of business administration majors. It’s hard to make a living in the arts, but I’m here to tell you, whatever you pursue as a career and degree, the arts are important. They are just as important as Math, Science, Writing, History, and other school subjects students are made to study. Your art classes are not easy A’s or fun classes, they are important for your education, they are use them to grow, to push yourself, and to expand your mind.

They don’t make us study calculus or trigonometry because it’s a useful skill everyday. They make us study math because it teaches us how to think. It provides us with logic and reasoning skills. Arts do a similar thing. They give us a chance to access our creative minds. It's a part of the brain and a certain type of thinking we rarely get to access in other standard school subjects. Check out this study on the issue.

In a world where we are pressured to memorize details for exams, sit still for hours on end and work like machines, the arts provide balance. The pressure to create a good piece is different than the pressure to memorize facts for an exam. The ability to create something you enjoy is soothing to a person who is always working on something for a boss or manager instead.

The arts provide an outlet of expression. Our whole lives we have been taught to think in language. Language is also an art form in its own respect, but by practicing visual arts, we are learning to think and experience in a way that is not language. It’s a whole separate world in your brain and it’s good to go there sometimes. Just like it’s good to exercise your body, exercise is good for your brain too.

Sometimes we focus too much on what’s important. Art rarely makes the cut. Life isn’t always about what is so called “important”. Sometimes it’s just about living.

Creating things in important. Be the person that adds beautiful things to the world. Add more than just yourself, add an extension of yourself. Add your art to the world because it makes the world more beautiful.