Artists are people who call themselves artists. According to Marcel Duchamp, the artist defines art, and it seems increasingly true that nowadays artists also define who and what they are. Definitions by nature are confining and restrictive, while art and its makers seek to be expansive and inclusive: It may be simpler to state what makes an artist a professional than what defines an artist. Artist has become a universal statement of creativity or, in the case of a culinary artist, someone who does something well. Socially, artists are often defined by the positive (freedom-loving, convention-defying) or negative (egotistical, bohemian) characteristics that other people attribute to them. Part of an artist’s job is to understand how artists are seen and what is expected of them, whether that be a certification committee that wants to see the art, a funding source that wants to read an artist’s proposal or the government that wants to see receipts.