So "art is innovative by it's very definition". The world according to Buddy. Someone's going to have to break that to the Dutch Masters like Vermeer, who painted in that tired "realistic" tradition, Vladimir Horowitz who just "copied" those old songs that Beethoven wrote when he played, Rachmaninoff who years after the fact was still composing those sad pieces in the classical style, and Andrew Wyeth who insisted on painting in that realistic style that was so over by the time he came on the scene. I've heard art defined a lot of ways by many people but this definition is somewhat limiting, especially when it comes to fly tying, or anything else in the real world actually.

Buddy ties flies solely to catch fish, that's it, the end, the only thing that makes sense to him. This shows a complete fundamental misunderstanding of what fly fishing was and is. Fly fishing was conceived as a more sporting way to fish. I liken it to bow hunting rather than hunting with a rifle. The traditions play a large part the overall pastime of fly fishing, dare I say fly fishing is, "by definition", a traditional way of fishing. While Buddy has a big problem with those of us that honor and keep those traditions, I have a big problem with those who don't.

I see supposedly innovative flies all the time that are glorified Buggers, glorified RS2s, glorified Muddlers, glorified Pheasant Tail nymphs, where a bit of flash has been added by some new synthetic material and now we have an "innovation". Yes, this is the "art" to which Buddy refers. The guy who patented the Kapok fly, now there was an artist!

Buddy's absurd definition of art aside, there are tiers who do raise the bar to the level of artistry, whether the flies they produce are innovative or not. If Rene Harrop's no hackle dun is not art, I truly don't know what is. He didn't invent it. It's tied with natural materials. There are patrons all over the world who collect fly tier's work. They must see something in these "copies" that Buddy doesn't. The reality is, and here's my definition of art, art is whatever influential people of a given era say it is. While Buddy bemoans the fact "That a tiny area in the NE US" is given all this fly fishing credit, there is a group that is smaller still in New York City that has defined what art is for everyone over the last century or so. The problem there is, they've lost sight of the traditions.