". . . the word 'fanart' means any amateur art for a specific TV show, movie, book, or other media event not owned or created by the artist," declares the Fanart article on Fanlore. That rings so true, my preteen, fanart-obsessed self from 1994 can probably hear the bells tolling.

I dedicated more time in the 1990s to downloading fanart than anything else besides fan fiction. File sharing culture wasn't a boon to my music collection, but it was absolutely a pegasus bearing gifts of Sailor Moon, Final Fantasy, and Harry Potter fanart for me to obsessively save. My artistic talent ended at coloring inside the lines, so I was often charmed and wildly impressed by the amazing pieces of art people were creating. I got serious enough to even print out fanart on my first fancy ink jet printer to decorate my notebooks and school binders. That's right, I invested hours in ink jet–printed fanart. Ah, memories.

My history as a fan is rooted in the history of Star Trek fandom's immense influence on the fandoms I now inhabit, as well as the explosive popularity of Japanese doujinshi that I was exposed to as a fan of Sailor Moon and Final Fantasy, both Japanese in origin. Harry Potter, which was my first large western fandom, had a huge fanart culture that I participated in as a viewer. My experience of fanart, thanks to LiveJournal, DeviantArt, and Tumblr, puts me squarely in the history of fanart as recognizable response to material from a canonical source, whether that material comes from the source itself, or another fan.

After fifteen years of thinking of fanart as one thing, I was surprised a few years ago when I learned that there's another definition and type of fanartist coming from the science fiction and fantasy fandoms. Artists creating original, non-derivative works, either for fanzines, convention materials, their fan bases, or themselves, that relate to science fiction or fantasy topics, aren't only considered original artists. They're also fans of a particular genre of art, in this case, anything that could be considered SF. If you like science fiction and fantasy, create art that falls under the SF umbrella, and consider yourself within the nebulous category of "fan," congratulations! You're a fanartist.

The wide discrepancy in the use of the term "fanart" between my different fandoms was a major source of curiosity, leading me to wonder what caused the different uses of this terminology. I'm often jarred when, every year, the Hugos come around and the Best Fan Artist category contains artists who are creating original art (and in the case of Spring Schoenhuth, jewelry, which is pretty rad), but the representation of other types of fanart is often completely missing. That is, of course, changing, as the 2014 category contained modern fanartists like Mandie Manzano, even though Sarah Webb, a professional illustrator creating original fantasy art, won the Best Fan Artist category.

When I first encountered these two extremely different definitions of fanart, I wasn't sure how they developed independently of one another until I started talking with other fans about the history of the fandom split between science fiction and fantasy fandom and Star Trek fandom. An example of this extremely gendered split is discussed by Paula Smith:

The SF guys didn't want to talk about things that women were interested in. Buck Coulson, an SF (and U.N.C.L.E.) writer, used to say, "There is no subtle discrimination against Trek fans in science fiction—it's blatant." And the women said, "The heck with this," and started making their own zines and organizing their own conventions.

If the dual life of this term began as different types of fannish engagement moved away from each other, why has it been able to persist so long? The term "fan fiction," which used to stand for amateur original fiction, has been completely redefined by popular culture. You're not going to find most writing group members in coffee shops around the world claiming that their next novel is fanfic. Why has that term been fully appropriated by a specific type of fan culture? Why has the term "fanart" within specific science fiction and fantasy space not done the same, or at least widened to recognize the multifaceted nature of fanart in other fandom communities?

The discussion and celebration of art outside of what I've called "media fandom"—however flawed this description is, since books are obviously media—is often muted, or sometimes nonexistent. Cover reveals used to be a draw, but even these seem to be fading in popularity from their once guaranteed virality from the years prior to 2010 as covers get more and more generic. The last big, community-wide discussion of science fiction and fantasy art I remember was Jim C. Hines critiquing various types of SF covers with women drawn in physically impossible poses. Once the laughs were had, we moved on, not to really celebrating art, but right back to not having much time for it except during award seasons or when it was particularly bad. Luckily, the trend seems to be slowly changing. Julie Dillon is getting the attention she deserves with this year's Hugo win for Best Professional Artist, and her Imagined Realms Kickstarter was successfully funded. Aidan Moher is constantly featuring new artists across a wide array of styles within the essays he publishes on A Dribble of Ink, for which he took home a Hugo for Best Fanzine.

But the celebration of original amateur art has nothing on fanart groups I am in or have known. I live within some of the most amazing, vibrant fanart communities. There's fanart for everything imaginable, especially on Tumblr, and artists have really taken Tumblr's functionality to the next level in order to share and promote their work. The community is so open and celebration is so easy. I follow fanartists working in a wide range of styles, with amazing speed, at a professional level—the only difference is that often they're drawing other people's characters and worlds. They're immensely talented people: some have career goals, some draw as a hobby, some are using fanart for practice, some use fanart to build a fan base and then use their fan base to expand into original art, and more reasons besides. I know instinctively how to celebrate this art, because we're a community and we love the same sources and characters, and we connect and communicate using our fandoms. But I'm not sure how to find a community for science fiction and fantasy fanartists doing original work because the search parameters are so broad. I continue to be confused that this definition of fanartist as a fan of science fiction and fantasy persists without expanding, and why, when sharing art is easier and the tools for doing so more ubiquitous than ever, we seem to have trouble in one tiny corner of genre fandom massing excitement for more than a handful of artists at a time. Why hasn't the definition opened up to widen the field to celebrate what's actually happening in a diverse set of fan communities?

The structure of SF fandom—at least the parts I can see—seems to only passively engage with artists while deliberately ignoring the thriving fanart communities and vibrant talents that are making art, especially those spaces that are gendered female. This seems especially relevant as we struggle with representation of more than cisgender straight white men and women on book covers. Considering how much of our fandom culture is about how books look—in the bookstores, on library displays, as thumbnails on social media reading tools like Goodreads, on our own shelves—it seems like we should be grabbing the opportunity to welcome all types of artists with new ideas by celebrating their works, in order to keep improving the way we're visually imagining our future.