
This is an adaptation of my weekly newsletter, Adventures Big & Small. If you want to receive emails like these, click here to subscribe.

Last Friday I joined a small group of talented family photographers for our first of (hopefully) many book clubs. We are spending the first few months on a classic work, one cited endlessly in creative circles – The Artist’s Way.
We were grappling a lot with how much the book does or does not apply to us. It is all about “unblocking” your inner artist and we were circling around the question of whether or not we felt creatively “blocked” when one of us asked the real question – “do you all consider yourselves artists?”
I was floored by the breadth of answers and even a little surprised to hear the uncertainty in my own voice when I said “yes.” There was some consensus that photographers have a harder time calling themselves artists than, say, painters, but that didn’t feel like the root of my uncertainty.
I thought for a moment…the thing is that I consider everyone an artist. So yes, I am an artist, but I’m not ready to shout it from the rooftops or build an identity based entirely on the idea. I feel a need to get more specific and ask myself how I use art to interact with my world and with you.
You are an artist. Truly. I believe it with my whole heart. You notice the way your daughter closes her eyes and basks in the warmth of a fading sunset, her fascination with the rainbow of colors she finds in the rocks on a windswept beach, the way your partner holds your son with tender strength after he’s fallen and scraped a knee.
No matter if you are a career sculptor or a mom who is too swamped with the grind of every day to so much as pick up a coloring book, art begins and ends with the simple act of noticing.
I am not here to make your life art, it already is. I am here to help you notice. I am an artist, you are an artist, and our work together is a collaboration.



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