Art and Crafty-Things

We don't have a lot of "crafty Mormon things" in our house.  Don't get me wrong, I love to create, I enjoy sewing and gardening, and working with scissors, paper, glue, and paint, I just don't make a lot of "craft" things.  On purpose.  I enjoy these things in other people's homes, I've enjoyed and proudly displayed these things when I've received them as gifts, but I don't see much purpose in making them myself.  The sole "crafty Mormon thing" I've made is a long painted piece of wood with my favorite scripture.  "The glory of God is intelligence, or, in other words, light and truth", Doctrine and Covenants 93:36.  Off and on we have a few liberal, artsy, non-LDS people in our home, and I guess I just felt like I needed some sort of statement piece that implied that LDS people can (and should be) intellectuals, and what exactly that means (to me, the search for light and truth).  So, we have a crafty-thing in our home.  When I made this a few years ago, it came at a time when I looked around our house and realized that we had a whole lot of art.  I mean a WHOLE LOT OF ART on our walls.  Not just large paintings, mind you.  Ceramics, pottery, sculpture, glass-blown things, etc.  This is of course only because Steven is an artist.  In our living room, our sole picture of Christ was an 8 1/2" x 11" standard issue church portrait.  It seemed a little out of balance to me, although I am a strong believer that the sum of all church art/crafty things/books in one's house does not equal their amount of spirituality, faithfulness, or even good person-ness.  I just wanted people to know what we were all about, and that it wasn't just art.  So, in short, we got a better, slightly larger Christ picture (Minerva Teichert's Christ in a Red Robe) a picture of the Jordan River Temple (where we were married, yes we didn't have a picture of it..), and I made this lovely crafty-thing.  I say all this because of this art-world and religion struggle that seems to be plague (at least one of the plagues) of my life.   Art is known as a highly intellectual field, and it is.  Within the art world, there is a constant battle between the high-brow wealthy art world and the intellectual artist and the non-intellectual artist and the poor artist and the poor art lover, and many things in between.  In this world, seemingly run by intellectuals, there is, at times, so little light and truth.  I feel like so much of the art world (meaning mostly art, and sometimes people) is positively evil, and this is coming from someone who tries to be fairly understanding when it comes to art and meaning and idea and concept.   To be successful often means to push the limits and boundaries previously set up and for so many people this means making art that shocks, offends, sexually stimulates, disgusts, or otherwise.  I listen to person after person explain their reasoning of why this kind of art is okay, but for me it is still wrong.  This would be fine for another person- they can just stay away- but my husband is an artist, and I'm going to be in this art-world situation for a long time struggling to make the best of it and determine the right from the wrong.   Yet, I feel strongly that this is the place for us.  I knew Steven was suppose to go to grad school to get a Master's Degree in Art.  I feel like the Lord has opened several doors for us to be able to do so.  And, I do really love being married to Steven.  Who has a more colorful, exciting job than an artist?  And I get a lot of free art for my walls.  I just wish everyone made good art.  Dog-gone it.  It doesn't have to be happy, I just don't want it to be so awful as to make me lose faith in humankind.  Is that too much to ask?