What is art? Are we art? Is art art?

Given that I work in an art gallery, we often hear debates on whether or not a piece of work is considered "art" or not. Each piece that comes through our place is obviously subject to scrutiny by, well everyone, but some works have people honestly questioning its place in an exhibition.

One such debate began last week and resumed this week. We have an affordable art show coming up next month, and we are accepting work to be hung (and sold!) in the show. This show is going to be marketed with an event where people are supposed to show up with their checkbooks ready (its only a week long show and it's going to be relatively inexpensive art, which is a deal not to be passed up as art usually costs a pretty penny). One thing about this show is that the work in it is unjuried (if you are unfamiliar with art jargon, that means that we accept all work submitted, without review by a committee to be accepted). That said, we have LOADS of really accomplished and well-known artists submitting stuff for the show, whose work normally sells for triple or quadruple what they will be charging for this show.

One co-worker and I joked that we could ourselves create a piece of work and submit it to the show. We are by no means "artists" in that we do not regularly create art nor do we consider ourselves particularly artistically talented. But then we got to talking, and we said we could at least try to make something, and if we thought it was decent, submit it to the show. I mean, why not right? One of our other co-workers, however, said she wouldn't do that because she was not an artist and thought it would be wrong to submit something she had done as legitimate art. She said she would feel terrible if someone paid money for her work. However, the first co-worker argued that it didn't matter who did it, that if someone liked the work enough to buy it, then there was nothing wrong with that. After some back and forth banter, they could not come to a consensus.

SO, I thought I would take a poll. Do you think it would be wrong to submit a piece of work to this show, if you do not consider yourself an "artist"? Knowing that there is a good chance that someone would buy it, take it home, and hang it in their house. If you were a person coming to a show to buy some affordable art, would you be mad/upset/disappointed if what you purchased was done by someone who had never done a serious painting before in their life?

Please, please, please be honest. I don't know exactly what my opinion is yet, thus my posing the question to you all. I would really appreciate and value any thoughts you have on this.

Discuss!