I've always found this to be an interesting debate, if you want to call it that. Art frequently gets the reputation that it isn't work. I feel like the associations it gets is "Oh, these are the people who think they'll be a super star. Well, reality will hit them and they'll fall flat on their face and wish they went to school as an engineer or some REAL job"
I love art. I've always found drawing to be a hobby. I tried my hand at creative writing. I never really wanted to make a career out of it, so I always likened it to a hobby. I wonder how much of that was influenced by the "Art isn't real work" logic nowadays.
For me, as I grew up and realized more things about the world I realized that art can be just as much a job as anything else can be, it just has a horrible reputation. I have taken a couple of creative writing courses and those were really difficult at times. It seems like a simple concept: sit down and write whatever you want. Well, I feel like a lot of students hate the "write whatever you want" even when it comes to research papers. We want guidelines and requirements. Creative writing CAN have requirements, but it's so free it's intimidating. After creative writing was over I realized I just don't have what it takes to be a creative writer. It would take too much mental effort for me to sit down and write the intricate stories, complicated plots and so on that you would need to be good at in order to make a name for yourself (unless you somehow got lucky and wrote a piece of garbage like Twilight and still managed to make millions).
Basically, I think that writing, drawing, sculpting, whatever form of art it may be can be just as challenging and just as intensive as anything else. It may not be something that you see physically, but mentally it's definitely there.
... Although at the same time, I still definitely have my opinions on what is art and what is not. (The Walker or Weisman or the stereotypical corporate art sculptures you see, for example, I do not consider art)... and I guess perhaps that's where the discrepancy lies. What IS art in the first place?
I too have always taken part in this debate. I have a similar situation, but with dance. I had started off here at the U as a dance major and I constantly had people asking me what I was going to do with a dance degree and that I couldn't possibly survive and make it in life as a dancer. It sucks that people do not see any form of art as work. I don't think they realize what the world would be like if we did not have any artists. It would be pretty boring I can tell you that. It also bothers me that artists usually do not get recognition for the hard work they put in or any kind of insurance or benefits. I'd say that's hard work when someone tries to create something successful so they don't lose everything they put on the line.
I have grown up in a world of whether or not art is considered work as well. My mother is an art teacher in my hometown and never really gets respect from other teachers in the school, because they teach something "worthwhile" like English, Maths/Sciences, etc. It even drove me nuts in High School when classmates of mine wanted to take any of my mother's classes or other classes within our school's Art department because they "wouldn't have to do anything" or it'd be an "easy A". This drove me crazy, but I loved getting all of their reactions when they found out it was more work than they anticipated. I'm in Comm 3201; Media Production this semester, and it by far is one of my favorite classes I have ever taken. Mostly because it's the combination of art and media. We all get to interpret how we'd shoot a scripted scene, and for our last project we wrote our own scripts. I think work is whatever we can handle doing for any large amount of time, sure something else may pay more, but if you actually like what you do, who the hell cares. I know after taking this class how much work actually goes into producing/writing for film productions.
"unless you somehow got lucky and wrote a piece of garbage like Twilight and still managed to make millions" -- Agreed.
When I first came to the University I was certain I wanted to major in History or Sociology. After my first year, I realized that upon graduation, I wouldn't receive the recognition I would ideally want in the career fields those Majors offered. I then applied for the J-school [ironic as we're talking about writing], was accepted, and will (hopefully) be graduating this upcoming May. So much of the work I have done throughout my time here at the University has been done free of charge (In fact, I'm essentially paying the University to do damn good work that I'll never be paid for), yet I have LEARNED a lot and continuously strive to improve my work each and every day.