"I'm an artist." ..... "Oh, what kind of art?"

I've only recently become comfortable with openly calling myself an artist.  I've always said that I did arts and crafts or I was a crafty person.  To me "An Artist" was someone who did serious artwork (Don't ask me to define "serious artwork".  I just knew I didn't do it.).  An artist was focused on one medium, not someone who dabble with a little bit of this or that.  When I started crafting, the options were slim.  This was a few years before AOL came to every house in America, so the wonders of internet browsing and shopping were not available.  I would make trips to the local Frank's Nursery & Crafts near my college.  Along with the plants and fertilizer, they had cross stitch kits and paints and wooden figures.  My earliest endeavors were small kits, that came with all the parts necessary to make a generic thingamajig.  (I vividly remember spending 8 hours cross stitching a 3" x 4" picture of bread that I'm sure my mother still has.)

So now that I have said it (quietly, but still I said it), the next question people ask is "What kind of art do you do?".  I thought the artist thing was the hard part.  Now I have to try to explain the hodge podge of my creative process in a short sentence before their eyes glaze over.  A few years ago I started my evolution towards mixed media art.  For now that description fits my artwork best, but most of the times when I clarify that I am a mixed media artist I notice alot of people getting that look like my dogs do when they're really confused.  Most of the humans don't cock their head to one side and raise an ear, but the impression is the same.  If only I lived in an artist community my explanation would be done by now, but I don't.  I still struggle with how to explain that I sometimes work with paints, sometimes papers, or plaster or metal or organic material or beads or sometimes all of them plus anything else that inspires me.  

For now, I have settled on telling people that mixed media is like a collage on steroids.  That is until I evolve onto something else.  The best thing about art is that you can always try something new and it just might stick.