Making Toast, Making Art

My performance experiment was art because I made the toast with the intention of making art. With each time I made the toast, the process became more familiar to me. The process became a habit, but each time I did notice something a little different in my process. I was picking up on ways to make the toast making flow smoother. I perfected the darkness level with each time. After buttering the toast I placed the two buttered sides together to help the butter melt. With each time, I was able to improve the quality of the process. As you can see from my experiment photos I did not start the repeat the process until I had consumed the toast. This was art because I was putting my full attention into the action. In most cases, I rarely think about making toast, but this time I was calculating my every move, making sure I was doing it right in order for the toast to turn out just the way I like it.
Art can be anything, I don't think it is defined as one specific thing. I think something becomes art when emotion and attention is put into the act. Any ordinary day I wouldn't connect so much with toast, but for this I did. It was bringing out my organization and detailed personality. I really like my toast a certain way so if that meant less butter or more toasting time, I was able to change that. Usually I just have to deal with what the toast is like when it is done because I don't have enough time and I don't feel like wasting the food. When something is professed as art and you can see emotion coming from it then that is when it is art. I feel like there is a deeper meaning to art then just the surface.
The difference between art and life is how you make it different. I feel that in life I don't care to much about making toast, but when I spend two hours making toast it becomes part of me and my full attention is given to the toast.
An audience is not necessary in this case expect my mom who took the pictures. If an audience was present, I would have been even more involved. Even though I was calculating my every move, I feel that the audience would be analyzing me more. I would have to adjust to that and probably get somewhat flustered and may mess up, it might turn into a mechanical action being done over and over. It would still be art; however because I have chosen it to be so because I would have full intention of making it art.
Like I have said making toast into art made me realize personality and the detailed person I am. I like things to be a certain way, so when I was making the toast I seemed to be very interested in trying to make it just right. I can see though this being a shortfall of mine too, because I feel I am very judgmental of myself and when things don't go as they should in any case I am very hard on myself. Art is a way to grow and seeing the individual you are inside and out. This 2 hour experiment gave me a little insight into the things I could change that might make me feel better and start giving myself a little credit.