If we’re writing a blog about art, I suppose we need to start by defining what it is. Why do we make it? How do we know if we’ve succeeded? How do you know if that colorful canvas is worthy of being called art? What is art?

I once had a teacher assign a project to help his students define the word. His definition of art was “anything manmade.” He had us choose something from our hometowns that might not be considered art and write a paper about why it is. People chose street lamps, buildings, even a manmade lake, and gave presentations to the class about why those things, because they were manmade, could be considered art.

Years later I realized I didn’t agree with my professor’s definition. There are billions, trillions, gazillions of objects made by humans on this planet. There are Barbie dolls and Justin Bieber posters and electric blankets and cotton balls and on and on and on. Are they all art? Of course not.

I adopted my professor’s definition, “anything manmade,” but with one condition. I believe art is “anything manmade where the maker was trying to communicate something.” I must say, I’ve never heard that definition anywhere and I’ve never heard a better one. I’m proud that it’s entirely my own, and if it’s my only memorable contribution to the history of art, I’ll be satisfied.

Visual art, just like any other art medium, has an idea it’s trying to express. Take music. When you hear a song, you don’t connect to the singer because the arrangement of notes is technically perfect. The song makes you feel something. The songwriter, singer, and musicians, have come together to say something about love. Or heartache. Or shaking your booty. Whatever. It doesn’t have to be deep. The point is, they had an idea and used those notes and words in that order to make you feel something.

If it were merely a series of notes with no message, it wouldn’t be a song. Or at the very least it wouldn’t last because it didn’t keep people coming back over and over in order to feel what it communicated.

The visual artist has the same job as the singer of your favorite song. That is, to try to say something. A painting so beautiful it makes you cry only rises to the level of art if the painter was trying to say something with it. The artist’s message might not always be clear, or it may take some background for the viewer to understand his meaning, but there had to be an attempt at a message before it meets my definition of art.

As for the school project that inspired my definition so many years ago, it was gang graffiti. I brought in photos of how gangs marked their territory in the Mississippi Delta. And while very few people would say that four-letter words spray-painted on an overpass could be considered beautiful, anyone in the area would know exactly what it meant. The guy with the spray paint had a message, and he delivered it loud and clear. That is my definition of art.