What is the role of art in the world?

This is a loaded question for me because ART is everything!  What we touch, see, feel, hear and taste.  Art is rich, demands attention and exploration, allows for contemplation, pondering, adds value and beauty, colour, intricateness, intimacy, connection, love, peace.

Art feeds my soul.  Listening to Andre Bocelli and having his voice ring into my heart and throughout my body - that is ART that brings me to tears.  Watching dancers from Alvin Ailey's American Dance Theatre perform "Revelations" expands who I am as a human being.  I see the beauty in the movement, the strength, the story, the drive, the discipline to perform, I see the beauty of the human body and form, the emotion.  Viewing Monet's "Water Lilies" melts a body into the genius of his mind and how paint can be used as a medium to convey and express those feelings.  Hearing a Philharmonic orchestra play the 1812 Overture, takes me back to the battlefields to be a part of the aching experience.   An Ansel Adams photograph gives me a vision of the expansiveness within the world and it's natural beauty, an appreciation glow. 

Art transforms, enlightens, engrosses, mesmerizes and rejuvenates a human being.  Art is my food, my nourishment, my peace, my reaction, my breath, my love...collectively, it feeds my soul...