What do you do as an artist?

What is the relationship between your experiences and ongoing artistic work to your curriculum and teaching.  How do you describe what you do as an artist.

It's hard to draw lines between my experiences, and work as an artist and my curriculum and teaching because I feel my curriculum and teaching aren't living and breathing yet.  So far my curriculum is hypothetical and my teaching experience is very little.  The curriculum I have written has a lot to do with things that I'm passionate about, especially in regards to my interaction with high school students.  I want them to think about communication and language and their interaction with others.  Those are the things that I think about and the things that I make art about.  I keep a running list of "art ideas" that I get as I think about different things throughout the day.  There are things that I want to do and explore and so I hope that my artistic work lives and breaths with my life and then my curriculum and teaching live and breathe along with my artistic practice.

As an artist, I honestly don't feel totally sure what I do.  People often ask you when they find out you're an artist.  "What kind of art do you do?"  "Do you draw, do you paint, do you do portraits, do you do landscapes?"  It's funny, at the MOA the other day I gave a tour to some Deseret Book employees who had just gone over to see our faculty show.  We stood at the entrance to a religious exhibit and they asked me "What kind of art that was" that they had just seen.  I tried to talk a little bit about process and concept with them and they seemed somewhat baffled.  I don't think the faculty art show fit their idea of art.  So what kind of art do I do?  I think I do... the kind that I have time for.  I wish I had a year where I could do nothing but think about and make art and take time to develop all of the parts of me that I want to.  Right now I feel like I'm the kind of artist that is barely able to put out enough art for her classes but wishes she could make more and invest more.  If I had to talk to an administrator about what I do most I would probably say that I'm a painter, that I can draw, that I can do printmaking, that I want to do more in social practice art.  Reading our book made me squirm just a little bit because I felt like I wasn't anywhere close to an "expert" in any area.