Two things have been swimming around in my head together over the last couple of days. Well, actually, there’s plenty swimming about in there, but these two things happened to crash together in a way I thought interesting, and pertinent to my work at the moment.
The art/craft debate, and the phenomenon known as “The Crit”. Kate Murdoch talked about it in her blog “Keeping it Going” ( www.a-n.co.uk/p/2295372/ ) About how she approached it with trepidation. When you come through the art school path, it becomes part of everyday life, and part of your practice. If you have followed a different path, then it is recommended you find an alternative, and that you keep the process going. Recommended by me. I’m sure other people think so too, but here, I’m talking about me. They are scary things when you start, as I did at age 16. But I can’t ever remember them being totally horrifying, but can remember being told I was lazy (no change there really) and can remember being accused of woolly thinking (yep, that’s still there too).
During the period of time in my life when I wasn’t interested in whether my thinking was woolly or not, and only had time to think about my job, my children, my parents and in-laws and whether the black stain on the wall behind the tv was terminal…. I was a crafter. I made everything… embroidery, clothes, jewellery, knitting, drawing, painting. I taught classes and designed for magazines, did talks to WI groups… all on a fairly haphazard, opportunistic basis. My crit then was the amount of money I could make, and whether people said they liked it. The time came when I no longer had parents or in-laws, the walls had been replastered, my sons are grown. There was room in my head for thinking. So I did some, and I liked it! The craft skills that had been honed became my artist’s vocabulary, I was fluent in this language and could use it to say other things. Things about my life, my ideas, my family, love, obsession, paranoia….
The Crit is absolutely CRUCIAL to this process now. Whether you find a group, like Kate did, or whether you do a course, like I did, both the Artist Teacher Scheme and the MA Art Practice and Education that I did at BCU… both include the opportunity for the crit. Other artists looking at your work, reading it, examining it for whatever they can glean from it. They recommend reading, other artists to look at, materials, methods of display… Practical help as well as philosophical discussion. This, for me, keeps the laziness and woolly thinking at bay.
But I have now finished the courses, and haven’t got a group to show my work to. The alternative for me, at the moment anyway, is Bo Jones. He doesn’t let me get away with anything. He snatches away my (exquisitely hand-crafted, natural fibre, colour coordinated) comfort blanket, throws it into the air and aims the flame thrower at it. Brutal, but necessary. A couple of hours of heated email discussion did the trick this weekend, got me back on track.
The thing about complacency is you don’t recognise it. It sneaks up on you. You have no idea it is there. It insinuates itself into your work, which becomes cliche, predictable, safe, comfortable.
I could sit in this very chair doing pretty and comfortable work until the day I die, happy and content.
BUT… find someone – anyone, anywhere, any circumstance to show your work, where they can tell you that you are being lazy. Find someone whose opinion you value, someone unafraid to tell you it’s rubbish. The reward for this uncomfortable-ness is a brain that fizzes, a body that wants to do things, hands that want to work faster, eyes that see everything.
So for me The Crit is the life-blood. Without it there is no art.
