*** Our church's Art Community recently issued a challenge for us to come up with our own personal artistic vision statement.  I decided to do mine in prose form, and I've copied it below for your enjoyment ***

I've decided that my art is decidedly middle-class.  Maybe even lower-middle-class.  I actually take pride in the fact that I did not grow up as a "child of privilege."  It's made me scrappy, practical, and persevering in virtually every element of my existence -- including my writing and photography.  I've come to see that I simply cannot separate my ordinary middle-class self from my ordinary middle-class artwork... nor do I want it to.  It may not be glamorous or lucrative -- but it works for me.

I came to a similar realization about myself during my sophomore year of high school, when I decided to try out for the school tennis team.  My chemistry teacher, Mr. Terman (who was also the coach for the school tennis team) talked me into it -- and I decided to go for it, even though my tennis skills were rudimentary at best, and I didn't even own a proper tennis racket at the time.   Mr. Terman  sold me one of his son's old, second-hand Prince rackets -- which I had to have professionally re-stringed, at a cost which shocked me -- and I was a part of the tennis team.  My skills with the tennis racket  couldn't hold a candle to the other boys on the team with their state-of-the-art equipment and country-club pedigrees, but my athleticism allowed me to remain competitive and in time I developed a style of my own.

I became a Pusher.

In the vernacular of the Midwestern American high-school tennis-playing subculture (or maybe it's a universal tennis term -- I honestly don't know), a Pusher is a player who wins points by effort, not by style.  He doesn't blow away the competition with high-velocity serves or crushing winners stroked down the sidelines.  He just keeps the ball in play.  He tracks down every ball.  He scurries forward, backward, left, right -- just doing whatever it takes to put the ball back over the net "one more time."  In effecct, the Pusher waits for the other player to make a mistake.  His style can be ugly.  It's no fun to watch (and perhaps even less fun to play) a match with a Pusher.  But the style can win points, games, sets, and sometimes even matches.  I'm pretty sure that the label of "Pusher" was intended to be derrogatory -- but I learned to take pride in it.

Indeed, I'm settling into the idea that the best way for me to pursue my ambitions in the fields of writing and photography is to come at it from the vantage point of a Pusher.

So instead of waiting for my "big break" -- sequestering myself to magically produce that timeless classic for our generation or building up a stockpile of photographic equipment and waiting for the day when I can launch into some full-time endeavor -- I'm just going to try and keep the ball in play.  I'm not going to seek some high-and-lofty niche in the global community; instead, I'm going to explore the ways that the "ordinary" and "middle class" display their own extraordinariness and nobility in their everyday ways and their everyday places.  Even in declaring this, I realize that I am not saying anything new or groundbreaking.  I am, by no means, the first person to consider the vast potential of ordinary, everyday, middle-class art.  Other writers and photographers (many of whom are significantly more talented than me) have created -- and will continue to create -- beautiful works of art inspired by the muse of the middle-class.  But if I am to ever earn a place among the greats, it will be simply because I persevered.  Because I pushed.  Maybe it will never amount to anything... but maybe it will.

I'm going to keep on blogging -- which seems to be a good forum for keeping the juices flowing and putting stuff "out there" for others to see and interact with.  I'm going to keep submitting short stories to my fiction critique group here in Amsterdam -- and doing my best to seek publication wherever possible and/or practical.  I'm going to keep taking pictures of my family and friends and church and city -- even inventing special projects for myself every now and then.  I'm going to collaborate with other artists whenever possible and/or practical.  I'm going to keep networking and producing and refining and developing my craft(s) -- and then see what comes of it all.

At the end of my life, I think I'll feel good about myself even if I never achieve any kind of fame or recognition beyond my own circle of relationships... as long as I know that I kept on pushing.