Recently I went and sat in a room with a small group of Tacoma School of the Arts students. Led by Fred Novak, a slight, jittery young fellow with self-applied Joan Crawford-style eyebrows (which is awesome), these students met at Mad Hat Tea Company as part of a SOTA class project. Fred's project hinges on gathering regularly with fellow artists and talking about art, exploring participants existing artistic selves, and delving deeply into the mire of the minds, bodies and soul of self and other.

I say with some reservation that getting together with groups of fellow artists to talk about art is something I have nightmares about. Even surrounded by the most skilled artisans, I can only take so much art-gabbing before I start looking for an excuse to leave. But this gathering, for all its first-meeting awkwardness, was beautiful and refreshing in a way I really didn't expect.

The topic was "inspiration," and the meeting led participants through a series of exercises that involved some brave self-exploration and dialogue - draw a picture of how you see yourself - list things that inspire you - answer the question: who or what do you want to be - and share your insights with a group of relative strangers. I went through the exercise with them, and discovered that despite my serious, perpetual art boner, I hadn't done any self-delving of that sort in as long as I can remember. I drew some stuff, I wrote some stuff, and hoped that I would be excused from sharing my scribblings with the class. I was just an observer, after all.

As the small group shared their internal, inspirational bric-a-brac, I realized I was witnessing something relatively novel and beautiful - a generation of artists that isn't afraid to lay it all out on the table. Scratch that. Several of them were terrified. But they did it anyway. What's the old saying? Courage is being afraid, and doing it anyway.

Reflecting on what I found so refreshing, I realized these kids weren't under the impression they had already arrived. They were sure they were artists, but the process of defining what that meant, who they were, and where they found their artistic fire was still a work in progress. Some found inspiration in other artists, some in celebrity personas, some in history, some in family, some in broad metaphysical concepts, some in everyday objects, and some found inspiration in friends. But as each student shared their sources of inspiration, I got the clear impression they knew they were still figuring it all out.

I would encourage anyone who labels themselves an artist to have the same courage Fred and his cadre of SOTA students showed. As artists, we can become trapped in our own definitions. We can become possessed by labels, and slip into a static pattern that becomes a kind of creative coma. The moment we stop exploring, internally and externally, is the moment we begin to recede from the ever-moving horizon where inspiration awaits - or, rather, begins to move on, leaving us behind.

A special thanks to Fred Novak for the inspiration.