Traversing the blogosphere always yields its sensory-overloading share of pop culture-infused irony. A while back I happened upon an iPad case fashioned in the likeness of the ageless Etch A Sketch (which actually retails online for $39 by a company called Headcase). Not only did the idea strike me as an amusing, culturally aware repurposing of an iconic product, it also tickled the heartstrings of this former Etch A Sketch enthusiast.

I used to belong to an Etch A Sketch club — not the physical sort of club that meets in the rusted bed of your uncle’s jalopy (or my area bookstore, the former meeting place of the Animorphs club to which I briefly belonged as a youth). Rather, I was the recipient of occasional newsletters briefing me on matters pertinent to the fire engine-red drawing tool. Recent confession of this membership elicited amusement at what one might politely term an unconventional pursuit for a child — a “pursuit” culminating in a self-compiled album of my most esteemed sketches (rudimentarily documented via fax scans).

Admittedly, there are more eccentric interests one could highlight in a public forum, like fire swallowing or snake charming. But as a fine arts recruit, I am compelled to defend or, perhaps more appropriately, dissect “sketching” as a legitimate art form — not that it isn't already viewed as such by some. A simple comb of the Internet will return a handful of artists who have received press or been showcased in galleries for their etching efforts (search Pauline Graziano or George Vlosich, among others, for a bounty of polished works).

Still, it's difficult to dismantle the perception of an Etch A Sketch as merely a toy, given that its fundamental purpose is entertainment. Anything born of the toy, then, might be perceived as banal and too accessible. After all, hasn’t the allure and prestige of high art been its manifestation of a talent wildly unreachable by the average individual? Yes, but many heralded artists, ranging from Picasso to Alex Katz, have employed an aesthetic that could be more easily imitated than, say, hyper-realist Chuck Close (take for example his eerily life-like portrait, Mark). Visual virtuosity, or an absence of it, is not the sole qualifier for an art form.

That nonetheless does not evade the charge of an Etch A Sketch as too mundane or even kitschy. Defending it might be analogous to championing a Woolly Willy portrait as the next Mona Lisa (remember the bald, jovial-looking man with mobile, magnetic facial hair? That's Woolly Willy). The contemporary art world, though, displays its own kitsch fetish, prime exemplar being the always-controversial Jeff Koons, whose canon includes inflatable animals and basketballs in water tanks; Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, a urinal submitted in an art show in 1917, can hardly escape mention, either. Why not accept the Etch A Sketch as a respectable vessel for art if artists such as Koons and Duchamp are cleared a prominent mantle in art history?

Not that highlighting Duchamp and Koons, two figures in the inconceivably expansive art universe, sets the standard determinants for qualifying or legitimizing an art form. Everything, simply put, is relative — the aim is not to establish a categorical criteria, but rather to jostle certain paradigms. If art is to be viewed as self-expression, then is it problematic for the extensions of one’s self to come in the form a plastic rectangle, screen and two wheels? Celebrated artist David Hockney, for example, was highlighted in a 2009 Daily Mail article for using an iPhone application to “create mini-masterpieces.” With titans like Hockney embracing unconventional media, then embracing underrepresented unconventional media seems fair — especially something as timeless as the Etch A Sketch. Though, to Hockney I would recommend the “Etch A Sketch” app for Apple devices, available on iTunes.

I’ll be downloading it.