There's Art, and Then There's Art Castle
If you grew up in the northern suburbs of Detroit, like I did, you might have heard of Art Castle.
I went there once when I was very young for a classmate's birthday party. Basically, you pick a while plaster shape (I chose a T-Rex), paint it however you like, spray glitter on it, and then the thing is baked in some kind of oven, to solidify how you made it look. You get to take it home.
The results were invariably terrible. They look almost as bad as their website, which is horrendous.
The point of the place is not to turn young minds into artists. It's not an art school. You don't go there to refine your technique or learn the methods that made Van Gogh famous. It's much egalitarian than that; anyone can go there, take a pre-shaped lump of plaster, and paint it however they please. It's a playground for people who want to do something artistic, but who don't want to buy their own equipment and learn a lot of new things.
A purist would scoff at this. Of course it isn't "real" art. And that's okay. But there are plenty of things in this world that we take very, very seriously. And we often restrict the people who can participate to those who promise to take it seriously, who promise to get better at what they're doing, who promise to put in the work to become respectable.
That works for a lot of businesses, but if you can let go of the purity of an idea, think about how you can turn what you love into a playground for others to play on.
I went there once when I was very young for a classmate's birthday party. Basically, you pick a while plaster shape (I chose a T-Rex), paint it however you like, spray glitter on it, and then the thing is baked in some kind of oven, to solidify how you made it look. You get to take it home.
The results were invariably terrible. They look almost as bad as their website, which is horrendous.
The point of the place is not to turn young minds into artists. It's not an art school. You don't go there to refine your technique or learn the methods that made Van Gogh famous. It's much egalitarian than that; anyone can go there, take a pre-shaped lump of plaster, and paint it however they please. It's a playground for people who want to do something artistic, but who don't want to buy their own equipment and learn a lot of new things.
A purist would scoff at this. Of course it isn't "real" art. And that's okay. But there are plenty of things in this world that we take very, very seriously. And we often restrict the people who can participate to those who promise to take it seriously, who promise to get better at what they're doing, who promise to put in the work to become respectable.
That works for a lot of businesses, but if you can let go of the purity of an idea, think about how you can turn what you love into a playground for others to play on.