This artwork lasts for only a few seconds, minutes at most, but it is one of the most amazing examples of artist expression I have seen.

Even this ephemeral art is not a 'waste of time'

Kseniya Simonova is a Ukrainian artist who just won the "Ukraine's Got Talent" competition. She uses a giant light box, dramatic music, imagination and "sand painting" skills to create instant art.

I could post more examples but...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vOhf3OvRXKg

I think it's art, it's a person physically crafting his ideas and his thoughts

The Navajo Indians consider sandpainting to be one of the spiritual healing arts performed by the medicine man. In such a system, if you are disconnected from the tribe perhaps due to conflict and want to be spiritually reintegrated so as to restore harmony, peace and balance, the medicine man would create an intricate sandpainting all the while chanting. More specifically:

"The patient troubled by physical or mental ills is brought to sit on the Sandpainting, facing east. This is the direction from which the "Holy People will arrive to infuse the Sandpainting with their healing power" After the patient is "sung" to, the Sandpainting is physically transferred onto his body. The chanter dips his fingers into a liquid and then onto the Sandpainting. "The sand which adheres is carried over to that part of the patient's body, which symbolically corresponds or harmonizes with the spirit in the Sandpainting."

Here is the "Blessing Way" chant:

In beauty I walk
With beauty before me I walk
With beauty behind me I walk
With beauty above me I walk
With beauty around me I walk
It has become beauty again
It has become beauty again
It has become beauty again
It has become beauty again

The sandpainting would then be destroyed after the ceremony.

Experientially, "The chanting and Sandpainting rituals have a miraculous effect on the patient. He knows that the "healing power of the 'sing' is good for a sick mind and a sad heart." These rituals may or may not cure his bodily ills, but he believes deeply in the Holy People who have been summoned to help him resolve his conflicts and regain harmony within himself and the world around him. "

Of course it's art.

If one person makes it, and even just one other person sees it and has apreciated it, then it's art.

Are you going to say that art can't be art unless it's got a certain shelf life?

What would that shelf-life be?

One year? Ten years? A hundred years?

Is it not art until it's been around for 100 years?

its not at all a waste of time but wasting your life ,making only these kinds of things is a waste of time

I think it's really cool. After all, if we stuck with traditional sculpting and paintings, nothing would ever change!

As a writer, I appreciate change. What if all the books on the market today still read as they did in the 1800s? It would be odd, to say the least.

But because a few people somewhere in time had the idea to change things up a bit, we how have our Stephen Kings and Patricia Cornwells. Anyhow, you get the point.

Art on!

Yes because it takes a lot of imagination and perseverance to create this works of art.

It's important that the creator of the work finds satisfaction in the act of creation.

With that in mind, this type of art is never a waste of time, since the sense of accomplishment is personal and the result harms no one..