Midterm Critique Response

Although I was at first very against watching my own critique, it is a good exercise to get the most out of it. I am usually pretty nervous before critiques and sometimes in the rush, I sort of black out and don’t remember what happened. But, with this tape I can look back and dissect every comment I wouldn’t normally remember. When I was presenting, it all went by so fast. I wish it had lasted longer. I think that with only twenty minutes to see a new body of work, it can be very hard to provide in depth feedback, but I think that everyone did a good job and were very helpful. As far as myself, I think I have much room for improvement. I don’t think of myself as a good presenter and public speaking is pretty frightening even when it’s a room full of people I know. I’ve gotten better over the years but still need work. I need to speak more clearly and louder. I need to not move around or pace as much. I tend to fidget. Although, I am very excited about my work and about what others have to say, I think my nerves make me appear less excited. All of this can be better but I think the only way is by repetition. I just need to do this many times so it becomes familiar.

As far as my work, I need to be very careful with the presentation. With all the black in the images, every tiny little scratch, smudge, and dust speck are more obvious. Tom mentioned that from where he was sitting he could see a fingerprint on a 20x30 and that he wanted to make it into an island or other object. While I like that he longed for it to be something in the void, I don’t want this to come from an imperfection in my printing. I want it to be directly from imagination or memory. Also there were a few prints where the quality and brightness were off. I decided to present them for this working critique just as a reference to size, but I know that I need to nail the technical printing aspects for other critiques.

Lastly, I wanted my artist statement to be very concise. I didn’t want to give away every minor detail to the work nor did I want to sound preachy. There were parts of the series that left people feeling unsure and they were looking for the reasons why. Since this was a working critique I explained some of the elements they had questions with. I am still trying to figure out how much I should include into my artist statement without giving it all away and leaving the audience with nothing to figure out on their own.