Thursday, October 6, 2011

Self Critique




In early September I traveled to the Washington DC area to work with members of the Potomac Fiber Arts Guild. Part of that visit was the presentation of my new lecture, Self Critique.

The topic of how to critique your own work was suggested by the program co-ordinator and it is a very good topic because if you are serious about your work you are always engaged in making thousands of little decisions which determine the results of what you make. The hardest part is when you get near the end and must evaluate what you have done.

I began the process of gathering information and thinking about how I evaluate my own work. I made the decision that I wanted to slant the talk away from the usual discussion of the Elements and Principles of Design and give the audience as much "inside" information as I could gather. To do this, I composed a list of artists who work at a mature level. Each artist received a list of questions to which they responded. In addition I requested that they provide several images that related to specific criteria. These artists sent wonderful information and images and that information became the focus of my lecture. While I will not be posting specific content from the lecture I am planning a series for this blog about evaluating work.

I want to thank all of the artists who participated. It was so interesting to read their responses and hear both a unified voice on some points and much diversity on others. The artists are:


I will be presenting this talk again May 21 for the East Bay Heritage Quilters, in San Francisco, Ca. followed by a two day workshop. If you live in the area I invite you to come and participate.

Thank you for spending time at Studio 24-7. I love hearing from you and remember:

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