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 What is Art?
by Alice Korach
Nealay Patel asked a heartfelt question on the Bead Bugle recently, “How do I get discovered as an artist?” Well, of course, that’s the million dollar question. And the blunt, unpleasant answer is that most of us won’t. Furthermore, those few who are recognized bead artists such as David Chatt and Virginia Blakelock, whose work is collected by art patrons, still have to devote a large portion of their time to earning a living by non-artistic means.
 When I read Nealay’s message, I thought of Vincent Van Gogh. Today his paintings sell for many millions of dollars. During his lifetime, he was never able to earn even the merest pittance by his art. Without his brother’s help and support, he would have died even younger than he did. Nonetheless, he was driven to continue painting. The need to create beauty, to capture one’s internal reality in an external, permanent form, is, for some, more important even than food and shelter, than life itself. But the wherewithal to hold body and soul together, to provide a place and the means to make your art, is also important. We need to do what’s necessary to be able to pay the bills and to buy supplies to make our art, and we need to carve out the time from ensuring the necessities of life to devote to that art.
But what is art? Many of us make beautiful objects – jewelry, sculpture, wall pieces – and for some of
us, the work even sells well. Are they art? Maybe, if your definition includes lovely things that suit people’s tastes. Art with a small “a”? I think I make a lot of this sort of thing in my pāte de verre, the lost wax glass sculpture that obsesses me and drives me to create. (It would be nice if more people wanted to own it; perhaps someday ….) But I don’t think I make many pieces that I would call art with a big “A.”
 What do I mean by Art?
Several years ago I was at SOFA, in Chicago. This show is attended by galleries from all over the world that display the work of their finest artists. It is a feast for the senses and a source of great inspiration and humility. As I wandered past a case of something or other, I was suddenly stopped in my tracks by a huge opaque glass amphora on the floor next to a case. It was the work of William Morris, a successful glass artist associated with the Pilchuck School near Seattle, WA. I had long admired Morris’ glass tusks on display at the Seattle airport, but this piece was something else entirely. It stopped me dead. I recognized it as perfect. It completely occupied and filled the space it sat in. As I contemplated it, I had the sense that there was no time, only the reality of this utterly complete thing. I could have sat on the floor next to it forever gazing into its depths and drinking its essence into my soul. Even today, as I write these words, I feel myself slipping into that timeless moment that the piece created for  me.
Being a scholar of literature as well as a would-be glass artist, Morris’ amphora brought to my mind bits of John Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” Two fragments stood out, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty” and “For ever wilt thou love and she be fair,” which is addressed to characters painted on the urn; and the poem at last made sense to me. Yes, Morris’ vessel was entirely true within itself, and that truth was indivisible from its beauty. The perfection of the thing revealed a glimpse of eternity. Time was frozen in the ever-present now of the reality Morris’ amphora created, and it seemed always to have existed.
I don’t remember anything else I saw at that SOFA. I laughed and chatted with my friends, but my mind was turned inward, contemplating the truth that I had seen, begun to understand, and yearned for. And I was filled with a longing to go home and create something to express the truth and beauty that I had experienced. I knew that my glass work, or at least, my relation to it, was forever changed. I realized that I would create very few things that were utterly true within themselves, but from then on, that would be my goal.
The piece I made that night, which I failed to photograph, comes close to realizing my goal. It was recognized as such by a glass artist and gallery owner, Jared DeLong of Lost Coast Art Glass in Arcata, CA, who has it in his gallery. From two graceful hands rises a spiraling ribbon. I call it “Creativity.” Another “true” piece is a large pink and yellow dinner-plate dahlia. When I look at these pieces, I fall into them and time is briefly suspended in the moment of contemplation and the sense of recognition. I wish I could make more pieces like them. Am I a glass artist? Yes. I make many beautiful things in glass. But it is rare that I make Art. I think the thing that makes me comfortable calling myself an artist is that I continually strive to make work that seems always to have existed, that is true, that stops time. Ed. Jared DeLong was kind enough to photograph Alice’s work for both this article and Alice’s personal photo library. The Lost Coast Art Glass Gallery no longer offers Alice’s piece, Mr. LeLong has added “Creativity” to his private collection.
Maybe my standards are unrealistic – too exacting. I don’t dare impose them on others; each person has to define her own sense of Art. But I feel comfortable demanding far more of myself than I can ever consistently deliver. If art was easy to make, would its creation be a worthy aspiration?
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