I should say, you think you’re not an artist anymore. You pick up a pencil every once in a while and doodle. You used to spend hours, or even days working on one piece. Now you just can’t seem to find the time or place to draw, paint, sculpt, sing, dance, etc. Maybe you just don’t have the time anymore, or maybe you’ve lost your voice, inspiration, or purpose in your art.

If you’re like me it happened somewhere along the line after high school. You worked all day, every day during the summer, and then after work you were either too busy, too tired or just lazy to do any art. At one point you even forgot how you were ever an artist. You took art classes in high school and did a lot of projects for classes, that people thought proved that you were a creative person, but now you’re not so sure.

What happened along the way? How did you just stop? If you were able to stop being creative, for a variety of reasons, were you ever an artist? What is a true artist? Is it the stereotypical indie-music-listening, Free-People-model looking, sketch-book-carrying, free-thinking person whose life is dedicated to producing art?

I hope not.

I was once asked if I knew art when I was discussing the meaning behind a short story with my professor. I replied yes. She then asked me what I knew about surrealism, and I couldn’t answer her. I never learned surrealism, or studied any particular work of art, but I have produced art several times in completed works. I wasn’t lying when I told her that I knew art. I believed that I knew art based on the fact that at one point in my life I produced completed works. I finished sculptures, I drew figures, I sketched designs, art was a part of me.

I don’t carry around a sketchbook. Most days I don’t wear anything particularly out of the ordinary. Indie music is not all I listen to. I haven’t started a project since I graduated from high school. Yet I’m in the fashion program. I sketch designs when it is an assignment. I finish my fashion projects. I think about designs every day. But am I even a true artist anymore? Or maybe just a wannabe?

At the most basic level, an artist is someone who creates. I think that I still create something every day. I create notions that I’m going to be a fashion designer who can help other fashion designers become successful. I create scenarios of being on time to class every day. I create images in my mind of the ideal muscle definition I believe my body should have. I create the type of person I’ll become once I’m a much older, wiser, braver, kinder, better person.

Am I an artist? I’m still not sure. Is this article art, or just a mixture of thoughts from a fledgling fashion designer with a laptop on a Wednesday night? You can be the judge of that. Yet I know I’m not alone in my current state of being-an-artist limbo. Whether or not I can break out of it is up to me.