Despite our culture’s tendency to conflate art and creativity, they are actually two distinct institutions. The difference becomes clear when we consider that art requires creativity, whereas creativity is used to impact more than art. For instance, some of us channel our creativity into engineering, flipping houses, or researching vaccinations. While each effort boasts intrinsic value, none of them fit neatly into the “art” bucket, and none of those roles are filled by what I would call “artists.” In essence, creativity lays the groundwork for art, not the other way around. Every artist is creative, but not every creative is an artist.
If art and creativity are separate and distinct entities, and an artist and a creative are not synonymous we’re left with a pair of questions: what is art and who is an artist?
To provide an accurate answer, we must first establish that an artist and their work are (partly) defined by their lack of concern towards utility and visibility. Put simply, an artist and their work (must) do and be motivated by something other than solving problems or adding some sort of objective value.
The second aspect of defining art (much like art itself) refuses to be put in a box. In essence, art is what we do if we choose to work when the doors are closed. Art is what we make when we don’t have a list of clients to please or customers to satisfy. Art is what happens when we approach our work with more in mind than the bottom line. An artist then, is someone who consistently makes things no one will see, someone who makes creative work for the sake of it, someone who sacrifices their most valuable resources not for extrinsic reward but intrinsic pleasure. An artist is someone who endeavors to make something regardless of its ability to gain mass appeal or become a viable product in the marketplace.
So, if an artist is someone motivated by something other than utility, and artwork is the manifestation of projects being completed regardless of their potential for visibility (or profit). Maybe art is simply the result of doing, coupled with a refusal to be concerned with anything beyond the act itself.