Thanks for everyone's replys, there's a few points I'd like to address, but i'll save them for later (I have to go get PAID to create - I know, the horror of it all), but I'm really happy to be able to vent what I've been observing for a long time! I apologize for the length of what I wrote, but I could write several books on this topic.
I'm an artist. It's part of me, it's not something I chose to do, I'm compelled to do it. I hate what has happened to my craft, to my profession, to my calling. The left highjacked art on campuses and in the galleries and museums long, long ago, and it's full of the same puffed up egos and mindless idiocy that's blatant in other areas of our culture - look at PETA, or the mindless fascism of public education. NEA? Don't make me laugh - they're the enablers for a lot of what's wrong with art these days.
It makes me sad, to think that if an artist of the caliber of Michelangelo were to appear, he/she would starve and go unnoticed, while some half-wit sells a stuffed horse hanging from a ceiling.
Robert Heinlein postulated a future time, called the "Crazy Years"...we're in them. (yes, I'm outing myself as a R. A. H. fan)
Because her talent was in representational art, she was mocked by many of her classmates and critiqued severely by her professors. She no longer is interested in painting, because the cadre of galleries and former students she sees have convinced her that painting things that people LIKE is not really "art."
I hope she will return to painting at some point. Right now she is applying for a graduate school program in library science.
My favorite work was at a student show was a larger than life oil of a male student's genitalia, as seen when he looked down at it. (Rolling my eyes in disgust.) Now there's something one can market!
I also remember the project my daughter had in "wearable art" where she took an inordinate amount of time to make a costume that looked like a chess piece, using hula hoops and stretchable fabric. Of course, she got a lukewarm comment and a "B", while the star of the clas produced a necklace made of DEAD BABY MICE ENCASED IN RESIN. I am not making this up.
So, I have an axe to grind with the current gallery system and the pierced tongue, green-haired, black-clad no-talent sycophants who scam both the public and the government. I am glad to see this movement starting, and I will also subscribe to the magazine!