Artist. Creator. Performer. Teacher. Designer. Photographer
Ihaiah Miller
The Artist's Calling
A Manifesto
What is Art?
Art is the language of the soul.
Through the craft of art, one is giving voice to and ability to articulate the language of the soul. The language of the soul has many tongues and countless voices. There are as many languages as there are souls to speak them, and as many translations as there are souls to receive them. Every artist speaks a different language, and every soul exposed to that voice receives it differently.
We receive and experience art through our senses but the translation of art, the understanding of it, is felt by the soul, within the soul, and through the soul. In this way, art is performative. It creates an infinite continuity of transmitting the empathic experience from the artists/ performer to the audience/ receiver.
Art is not the work, the product, or the production. Art is not the perception. Art is an action, it is a verb.
Art is the communication of the empathic experience that exists between the creator and the spectator in the impermanent, subjective, tacit experience exclusive to a single moment that can never exist in the same way again. Art creates authenticity through the impermanent experience of 'ba'[1]
Art, in this essence, is an act of divinity, and art creation is a manifestation of the divine.
Who are Artists and Performers?
Artists are soul speakers and performers are translators. They are not mutually exclusive but inherently related and intertwined.
The artists must possess the strength and vulnerability to speak with honesty, truth, and integrity.
The performer must be willing to and capable of understanding the artist's intention and through their individual perception and tacit experience, communicate the story's perspective as if it were their own to the audience.
The Creative Process
When the artist creates something, it allows the soul to speak, and to release what it has been holding on to. By releasing emotions into an art product, the artist, who is also the receiver, allows the soul to speak It should never be forced, and be allowed the time to develop authentically, genuinely, and fully. The Creative process is cathartic, inspired, and joyful. a truth of experience and to show that reflected through the creation.
The Artist's Calling
When one is called to be an artist, the divine essence of the universe has employed them with the obligation of preserving the past, influencing the present, and designing the future. They have been given the responsibility of being a witness and telling stories.
Being an artist and creating art is a vocation. I use the term vocation because while being an artist can be a job or a career, it is most importantly a calling.
Everyone is an artist in one capacity of or another; we all have the capacity to create art.
However, for those who make it their life’s effort, there is nothing else in life if it is not the creation of art.
[1] ‘Ba’ is a shared space that serves as a foundation for knowledge creation (Nonaka & Konno, “Knowledge-Based Theory of the Firm: Research Findings and Future Advancements Towards the Design and Managing of Enabling Contexts in Knowledge Organizations”, 1998)