>> There are those who hold that it's meaningless to say that this or that art is good or bad, better or worse; that it's all subjective and there are no objective qualities by which to measure art.<<

Nonsense, and the same is true of poetry. There are many technical aspects which can be accomplished well or poorly, and judged on objective grounds. The lines of perspective either are or art not parallel. The head is or is not in proportion to the body. And so on. Matters of personal taste and systemic aesthetics are different.

Then too, there are different reasons to make art and thus different criteria of success. Do you want to express yourself? Send a message to others? Fool with paint because it's fun? Record your nature observations? Experiment with the science of colors? Cover a stain on the wall? Make money? Those are just a few reasons why people have made art, and if it does what you want, it is successful. Whether someone else likes it is only relevant to a subset of goals.

>> I hold to the opposite, that while no piece of art is worthless, some pieces of art are worth more, and this quote finally gave me a data point by which to understand the distinction.<<

Well said.

>> ...but there are few bards now. <<

I am a bard, in the sense of being a storyteller, a poet, and sometime word-cracker. I haven't got my musical ability in this life, but oh well.

Yeah, not a lot of us left, but some. Plenty in SCA and Pagan circles.

>>You have to be willing to make the bad stuff so that you can become a person who can make the good stuff.<<

Maybe, maybe not. I always liked my writing, even though it got better over time. That is, I was always able to make some really good things, it's the average quality and the top quality that went up. Compare with drawing, where I was rarely happy with any of it and soon concluded that I hadn't got the skill for that in this life.

It's totally true of cooking, though. You can't make spectacular things in the kitchen if you're not willing to take some risks and face the occasional flops.

Then there's this beauty:
"Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep."
-- Scott Adams