Breaking away from the stereotypical definition of art to discover better and brighter things.

When typing in the word "Art" into google images a variety of pictures showed up, as you can imagine. The first three pictures were of paint palates and paint brushes. The pictures shown after could all be considered illustrations. When the term art is brought up, many people think of an artist and normally associate an artist with a painter.

In a way, we have been taught to have this narrow meaning of art.

I'm sure we all remember Art Class in school where the idea of art was minutely expanded from painting to drawing, paper mache and clay molding. In my art classes, we spent the majority of our time drawing and painting and usually did one paper mache or clay molding activity per year. Sure, in this class we were exposed to a few more media of art than just painting, but the idea of art was still limited to a small variety of crafts that never provided purpose. We have subjected art to the tiny category in which it does not belong.

At what point are we taught that art lives outside of a cramped high school art room or the craft isle at Target? We aren't.

Art is such a huge part of our everyday lives that we tend to miss it.

The Art Park in Downtown Albany displays numerous boards with the statement "Art is..." written at the top with blanks for people to fill in the definition. A few of the responses completed the statement as follows, "Art is freedom" "Art is a blessing no matter the disguise" "Art is life." I think these are fair depictions of art and they show just how vast the idea of art truly is.

If someone designed and created it, then isn't it art?

Think of the table you are probably sitting at, or the chair you are sitting in, someone designed these objects. Someone probably spent a lot of time analyzing the table or the chair to make sure it was exactly how they wanted it to look. By this definition, many things can be considered as art.

The idea of art becomes so narrow because people tend to believe that only the best artists' art is truly art. Some pieces of art do deserve a higher reverence than the design of a tissue box, but that still does not mean that the tissue box is not art. This is just like writing a song. If you wrote a song that people hated, it would still be a song nonetheless.

Art is everywhere, we just have to open our eyes a little more to truly see it.