Should you make bad art? Yes!

My brother Sam is a potter and sculptor. (click here) He's really good. There are a lot of old coffee mugs and creatures of his scattered around our family's homes. Sometimes I've picked up a mug that was heavy and awkward and ugly or seen a sculpted dragon that was lumpy, poorly detailed, and expressionless. In short, Sam used to make bad art. Which is exactly why he makes good art now.

Robot Mug by Sam Clark

I am a songwriter and guitar player. I've been doing it for around 20 years now, and sometimes I dig around in the old computer files and find songs from early on that are absolutely terrible (there are plenty of terrible new songs too)!

In our instant gratification society, we expect shortcuts to everything. A sense of craftsmanship is lost to us due to mass manufacturing. In turn, everything looks the same and everything seems perfect. Since we are seldom involved in the processes of making the things we use, we rarely see the reality of how things come to be. That process is messy, mistake-ridden, slow, thoughtful, and wonderful.

Some of the very best parts of being human are the parts that can never be mass produced or experienced in any kind of efficient manner. Can you mass produce character quickly? We try with endless self-help books, but character must be developed over the long haul like becoming a master violinist.

We can't expect to make good art at the first. But we must begin. So if you want to make good art, then start making bad art and keep going. Chesterton said, "Anything worth doing is worth doing badly."