As a student in a fairly traditional written communication program with a fondness for new media composition, text design, and visual rhetoric, I feel that I would be well served by some art classes. It’s unfortunate that such a divide exists between art (more like Art) and writing, but it’s not uncommon. What caught my eye in the hallway on Thursday, while pausing to catch my breath after hiking up seven flights of stairs to class, was a flyer for an art class on creative bookbinding/text design. I don’t have the timemoney for the class, and while I’d be interested in being present, perhaps it’s not something beyond doing on my own. I’ve spent some time Googling creative bookbinding only to come up with fruits of my labor that are gilded and ornate but are still the same old produce. What I mean is, I’m uninterested in books that are traditionally bound with a few page cutouts and a bedazzled cover; I want texts that have been designed in a different manner that are still intended to be read. Readability is something that seems to be missing from some of the examples I found, venturing too far into art, leaving its textness as an unwanted patriarchal structure in its rebellion. I find myself examining/confronting this idea/boundary of art a lot lately, and mostly on the defensive. An every day art aesthetic to small things, “normal” things seems nonsensical to many. It is either an issue with Artists who don’t wish to see their Art trivialized to the commoner, or the commoner’s blinders to anything “art” (as in: I just don’t get IT).

What does it mean to create Art/art?