The essential and essentially irrelevant visual artist

Ask most people and they would probably agree that visual art is important. And though they live in an intensely visual culture and are bombarded by messages in the visual language, they are willing to allow visual art to largely disappear from the schools. Visual art is, to be sure, a suspect career.

Imagine a world without the work of visual artists and designers. Pretty dismal. But most people are content to be left at the stick figure stage of development, content with the belief that that's the best they can achieve as the ungifted.

Where is the visual artist in all this? Most of us have met a policeman, plumber, businessman, teacher, salesman, bartender and so on. But it's hard to meet an artist, to talk to one, to have the opportunity to dispel stereotypes. So false notions of dress, behavior, lifestyle and career stubbornly remain--and artists themselves often buy into them.

Novelists, musicians, actors and rock stars are searched out for their opinions and freely give them. How often is that an experience for the visual artist? Serious artists do research, spend long hours problem solving, have substantive things to say; but this is not generally known in the culture. Aside from openings, contemporary galleries are frequently almost empty.  How often is the artist physically there with his audience? The system doesn't expect or support that.

Is this situation okay? Is the artist a victim? Does the artist have to take some responsibility for this?
What needs to be changed?

I would like to see the visual language given the credibility and emphasis it deserves in K-12 curriculum to educate the public in the language that so directly affects them on a daily basis. I would like to see visual artists regularly featured on talk shows as articulate speakers on meaningful issues. I would like to see visual artists engaging their audiences more regularly, more publicly and more energetically.

So I guess I'd better get started myself.