Hi Debbie,
I'm thinking of a situation where person A asks person B what B
thinks of the outfit A is wearing. All A was looking for was "does
this make me look fat?" but thought (in her own mind, not always
realizing what others might think she meant) that was clear, but
B, being a fashion designer, launched into a long discussion about
the colors, the pattern, the kind of fabric used, the sort of
silhouette.
A is overwhelmed (and, for the life of her, doesn't really
understand what in heck B is talking about, BTW). All she wanted to
know is whether the dress made her look fat.
To continue your metaphor, you walked into what amounts to a coffee
house in the fabric district and asked your question. And you’re
surprised when you got more than a ‘does this make me look fat’
sort of answer? You thought my answer was overwhelming? Good lord.
That was about as soft-shoed as it gets.
What does ‘critique’ mean to you? I’m serious about that question,
because you’ve walked into a place filled with people for whom the
word ‘critique’ has some very specific meanings, none of which
include grunting and saying “no, of course not dear”. That’d be a
waste of everybody’s time. There’s an old saying: “don’t ask a
question if you don’t want to hear the answer”.
Most artists spend a lot of time alone in our own heads. What a
critique means, outside of school, is a chance to get someone else’s
read on a piece, to get outside input. What the artist thinks about
the piece is utterly irrelevant, because 99% of the time they won’t
be there to speak for it. So they’d better ask around and see what
people who don’t live in their head see in the piece, because
that’s what people will react to. It’s a way to get a read on what
the piece says on its own. But only if the artist listens.
When I run school crits, I let everybody but the artist talk.
Whatever the artist has to say had better be in the piece. The whole
point of a crit is to give the artist input from outside their
skulls. That only happens if they listen. And you’re never sure
who’s going to encounter your piece, ready or not.
When I saw the way my question was answered, I realized I needed
to be clearer about what I was looking for. I'm not entering some
contest.
Yes, you are. Selling is a contest. If you want to make money, you
have to win by making the customer want your piece enough to give
you money for it. Think about it as a race. You have 24 hours in a
day, so does your customer. You have X number of hours to make
jewelry, and she has Y number of hours to make money. The contest is
to make pieces good enough that she gives you little green tokens
worth more of her time than you spent yours making it. Every sale is
that contest, over and over again.
To be honest, the critique as it stood, for the most part, was to
me as it would probably be to others on this list if I started
posting in Hebrew (though I assume some people on this list might
understand me)
I hope not. I spent a chunk of my evening to try to help you. I’d
hate to think I wasted my time.
In all of this fussing, you still haven’t answered the basic
question: why use PMC? What is it doing for you that other materials
couldn’t?
Regards,
Brian