The fact that arts journalism and criticism is seen as separate from arts in a general sense is a rather disconcerting reality. The deference afforded fine artists is of course deserved, but over time has also concluded in a spate of egos too large to be housed in a single venue.

Today, an ever broadening clutch of caveats separate one discipline from the next. It seems that only the most true of creators is able to ignore whatever accepted belief system has been set up to yield a body of work that is not only a singular thing, but able to be viewed with pleasure – whether it’s visually appealing or able to illicit actually thought.

Regardless, writing is undoubtedly a craft. And the respect given poets as well as scribes that work with fiction isn’t misplaced. There is, of course, a line between criticism and these other endeavors, but in the end, each of these writerly pursuits is rooted in working with language on a page – or a screen.

Frowned upon by those that have been negatively perceived by critics, artists/writers of any ilk seem to believe themselves of some different species than those who comment upon creative works.

Dorothy Parker, one of the first widely published female critics of any discipline, worked for Vanity Fair during the early part of the 20^th century. And with acerbic wit being splayed out on pages for any and all readerships to digest, she was able to come away with a unique voice and public persona that afforded her an interesting place in culture. She was a creator of art, writing short stories and poems as well as a critic of it all – and was summarily respected by folks on either side of the aisle.

In today’s odd media conglomeration, not only are there simply scores of unknown culture critics, it seems as if a great many of them are devoted to more than one discipline – not just writing critiques or on theory, but working in visual art, photography or in other mediums. There isn’t anything distinctly improper about that, and in fact it works to prove the point that crafting theory might rightfully need to be considered an artistic endeavor. It also moves to cement the fact that not even the individuals partially devoted to dispensing a taste-making piece of writing believe it to be art frustratingly enough.

There is a difference between art and writing artfully, but while the process of figuring a piece of visual art, sculptor, music or film a writer is able to draw on a variety of mediums to explicate a specific point of view - this act of combination seems to be clearly tied to the life of an artist.

Of course that leads to the question of what is ‘art.’ And while there clearly isn’t going to be an agreement upon terms, a portion of the definition could be guessed to include something about combining disparate pieces to create something new.

This all has come from a biased point of view, but it doesn’t lessen either the fact that at least some of it’s valid nor that everyone involved in the equation is a snob.