I think there are two sides to art. One is doing it, enjoying it, following your own path, discovering things along the way. In one sense, as far as the rest of the world is concerned, it's not that different from watching crap tv or smoking crack, but in another way it is, you are doing something, you are thinking about things, maybe it is like building birdhouses or baking muffins. The other side of art is that validation thing, You can't always get it, and you shouldn't quit because you don't, but it is nice to have, and there is nothing wrong with going to an art fair or showing off your birdhouses or inviting some folks over to taste your muffins.
What you don't want to do, or what I don't think you want to do, is to be thinking of selling your work while you are making it, and adjusting how you do it with an eye towards what will sell. Well baking muffins you should probably be thinking that because you really can't store all those muffins in your closet. But anyway my thinking is that if you are thinking of potential customers while you are doing your art you won't be focused right and won't do good art, But I can see how some could think differently, maybe the guy who I would be tempting to call a sell out is taking the opinion of others and weaving it into the production of his art and coming up with a product that is a collaboration between themselves and the rest of the world and is therefore superior because it is more accessible.
I think the whole thing where the true artist looks askance at the successful (monetary) artist and calls him a sellout is bogus. The true artist should accept the fact that being true to himself is not going to make him rich and quit bellyaching.
Horse drawn streetcars came before the electric ones. There routes were never that long and I used to wonder why did they bother, but then I realized that the streets were all mud in those days. Googling has revealed that Cheboygan also had electric streetcars for awhile anyway. The thing is if cars were for some reason not practical and were never invented, then the free enterprise system would have provided public trans. There would be money to be made in hauling people, and of course you would haul people where they wanted to go because that is where the money is.
I realize that none of this is actually practical. Streetcars gave way to the automobile because people preferred automobiles. Lately though public trans is making some inroads in more populated areas. Mid-sized cities are getting light rail and here in Chicago they are building apartment complexes along el routes with no parking garages because some people (like gracefully aging hipster Uncle Ken) don't want to be bothered with owning cars.
I think the war in Vietnam was much simpler because it was more us vs them, rather than some of us against some of them and some of those fighting with us and fighting against us are also fighting against each other. Also to us opposing or for it, it looked like more like good vs evil, whereas with the mideast wars it's more the lesser of evils, and the lesser keeps changing..
Old Dog speaks of the many crises going on today, looks like he just went down the contents page of The Economist, but that's in the rest of the world, but we Americans never pay much attention to the rest of the world.
I can see where Old Dog gets validation from people downloading his files and following him on thingiverse. It's probably tougher getting validation than in painting because any idiot can look at a painting and either like it or not like it but most people won't know what to make of a thingiverse thing. But at least his people know something about something, somebody who bought one of my cat paintings might do so because it looked like Mr Fluffy, but they would have no knowledge of my clever use of burnt sienna.
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