It’s hard being an artist - and even harder to confess I don’t know where that path will lead (right now, no where in particular) - I did a long post on the difficulties of being an artist at one of my other blogs where I write about Art, when I have something to say …  Yet more thoughts about painting when it’s hard to paint.

My post about the difficulties with Art is worth a read, especially if you liked my recent thoughts about engagement mapping and social media monitoring.

But here’s the thing - I have been thinking of Art from the standpoint of a solitary creator, which I often, am, - and running into dead ends and ruts - but little has been written, from a Social Media perspective about Art (I know some will dispute that - but given all the creativity we’ve seen in media campaigns - you’d think some of that would filter beyond, say, the ITP program at NYU, but I haven’t really seen it presented that way, at least, not that I’m aware of.   I also don’t see anything really out there, in Social Media, that’s there to “support” artists - in the way I describe in my post on Yet more thoughts about painting when it’s hard to paint.

Recently, an artist friend of mine, Scott Draves, who I’ve interviewed here and on my other blogs, created, what I’d consider, in retrospect, to be “Social Art” or Art that is User Generated, via the Electric Sheep Screen saver which is altered by all those who are running the software.   The funny thing is, there seems to be almost nothing written on how Social Media can support or enhance art, or artists.

No doubt, it’s easy to see why …. besides all the problems I alluded to in my post on why it’s hard to paint (above), taking time out to do Social Media, to even figure it out - would be a major drain against the time to do art … unless, as an artist, Social Media became part of the way you do art and promote yourself.   In a post at Beth’s Blog on Backtype: Another Listening Tool - Who’s Talking About You In The Blog Comments? Beth Kanter explains just how much time Social Media takes.

I think, in a way Scott Draves stumbled upon User Generated and Social Media before those labels were applied in the way they commonly are, today; the video I embedded here is worth viewing.

Anyway, I wanted to finish up this post (I’ll be at WordCamp NYC on Sunday, October 5th, 2008) by saying that Social Media ought to be used, in a more constructive manner, to bring artists and colloboration together - and perhaps, to deal with some of the issues I wrote about at Yet more thoughts about painting when it’s hard to paint.