The Public
Producing for the drawer is safe. Nothing can happen to you there. One worked on the piece alone, finished it either in agony or with joy, and then it sits there—often loved and just as often hated—and one has it.
It is there in the drawer, and you yourself know what you are capable of.
Perhaps a few friends and family do as well.
When you take the work out and bring it into public view, you step onto a stage. In front of it: the audience.
You reveal something of yourself, give something of yourself that you may be proud of, and you do something you love and in which you see a greater meaning—and in doing so, you enter the arena.
In the end there is the question of thumbs up or down, comments, evaluations, and possibly further invitations.
That is the public. You want something from it, and it wants something from you. And in all of this, it is not about the art.
