Picture a world without art.

It’s kind of hard to do, simply because we are so surrounded by art that it tends to be unrecognizable as such. Art blends in because it’s so accepted as part of the daily existence.

If one were to make a list of the numerous ways art is part of daily life, that list would be endless. Each day starts with the packaging of a favorite brand of coffee and ends with the logo design on one’s choice of toothpaste. Art may start each morning with the front page of the Washington Daily News and ends with the design of the tie worn by a late-night talk show host. It could begin each morning with a cellphone ring tone to the tune of a favorite song and cap off each night with a laugh-out-loud romantic comedy. In between are business cards, coffee cups, magazines, desks, T-shirts, eyeglasses, signs, lampshades, all of which share one thing in common: an artist, or team of artists, was responsible.

Those people, with an eye for design, color, pitch, expression, don’t come by their talent overnight. They don’t just sit at a sewing machine one day and create the next biggest thing in women’s fashion, or sit down at a computer the first time out and create the most recognizable logo in the world. No, they train. They hone their skills, much like an apprentice in any trade.

But before those artists grew up to design everyone’s colorful landscape, they were children who were exposed to the arts at a museum, a play, a concert and more. They were encouraged, at some point, to pick up a paintbrush for the first time, belt out a song onstage, create a set, learn that D follows C or red and green are complementary colors. They weren’t born artists; they were created.

It’s unfortunate that many do not understand that the arts generate 340,000 jobs, which is over 6 percent of North Carolina’s workforce, and $14 billion in earnings. In North Carolina, arts industries create $25.1 billion in revenue and $10 billion in exports.

Recently, Arts of the Pamlico has been actively soliciting participation from a younger set of arts patrons. It’s a campaign aimed at passing the appreciation of the arts to the next generation and get people involved who might not realize that art, in all its forms, is accessible so close to home. It also goes hand in hand with a campaign to engage children: let them watch an artist create a work of art in the window at the Turnage and invite them to participate in a Broadway-style performance. That’s the exposure children need to spark an interest, and perhaps one day a career, in the arts.

Arts of the Pamlico is set on creating future artists and art lovers, and all who can should assist in the effort because life would look a lot different without art. To quote a meme that’s made its rounds on social media for the last several years: “Earth without Art is just Eh.”