Artists do more than just paint. Many of them create works of art that rely on construction and material properties that engineers are familiar with and use frequently. Think sculptures, think kinetic art. They use welders and power tools and are concerned with structural integrity and Newtonian physics.
Leonardo Davinci designed mechanical contraptions and did art. The skills can be very complimentary. Engineers express their ideas not just through math but by drawing sketches and conceptual illustrations. Engineers are creative and so are artists. Artists often look to question the world and pose those questions to society through their art. Engineers may not like that the questions are not straightforward and often do not have answers (and yes, a lot of art is really dumb, but a lot of engineering is really dumb too, let's face it) but that doesn't mean that it doesn't serve a purpose.
A diversity of viewpoints is critical to coming up with new and novel solutions. We should welcome the inclusion of these new viewpoints. And if "artists" learn a new appreciation for STEM through that process, how does that hurt us? It hurts us more if we act like superior, cliquish snobs, insisting on our own superiority.
Try listening to this episode of the Embedded.fm podcast:
http://embedded.fm/episodes/142 It features Sarah Petkus who is a kinetic artist who also works with robots. It's really cool.
Why not encourage that sort of crossing of disciplines rather than denigrating it?