A Special Critique

For the past several weeks, I have been working on my first sculpture project. There were several times I wanted to stop. I felt like I was over my head in what I wanted to do, but I did push myself to complete it.

What I produced was the realization of what a child imagines an ordinary cardboard box would be. Using that and a hell of a lot of plaster, I was able to construct a cave. At the suggestion of Terry, I put in a few of my personal plushies inside it as a way to give a little surprise to the piece.

Personally, I could be happier than I am with the piece, but what artist doesn't dislike their own work.

Anyway, today was my first critique in sculpture. After spending so long on this piece and so much money on it, it was time for the class to have at it.

And they didn't hold back.

For the most part, they all pretty much agreed that the piece lacked something. A draw that would make people want to get on all fours and explore the piece with their eyes. The best suggestion I heard was to add a piece of carpet underneath the entire thing so that it looks like a box that was set up by kids in the middle of the living room floor.

Honestly, I felt like it wasn't a very positive critique, but seeing as how that's par for me, it's no surprise.

I'm trying to get out of defending my pieces when they are completed and out in public. The reason is because of the fact that when I do defend my ideas, I get political with them. I debate and debate and debate, and that's not really a good way of going about something in art as far as critiques go. When it's done and out in the public area like a gallery or a hallway, it's fair game. If the public thinks it sucks, it sucks. If they think it is a work of God, it's a work of God.

However, I had to be stupid and asked the question that made me feel stupider for asking it.

Were my classmates critiquing my piece as adults or as people that have lost touch with their inner child?

I read off of the people that responded to this a kind of defensive vibe. In fact, I think several people were offended by my question, which is probably why I feel stupid even now for asking it.

Adults, for me, are people that can appreciate things in a mature sense of the word. They are the ones that see the joy of going to theme parks and giggle at cute things and turn into little boys and girls once they find something fancy.

People that have lost touch with their inner child are the ones that feel they need to have a job because they need money to pay the bills so they can have electricity to run the computer so they can get reports typed in by a certain date. And so on. They don't feel the need to stop and smell the roses. They look pretty as they are passing by at 100 mph.

Looking back on it after detaching myself from the moment, the critique is pretty much par for my educational course so far. I'm not producing anything amazing, but people are appreciating it.

I could end this post here, but I have something else to say about my piece.

When I came back from lunch, I was walking to find Terry to bounce off another project idea that I thought was just insane. On my way, a classmate, her friend, and her friend's children (I think they were her kids.) were in the area of my piece. She called over the kids and pointed to my piece asking them what they thought it was. I stopped and turned around out of curiosity. After all, the piece was based around the mind of a child, and the girls that were visiting the school today were around the age range I was aiming for. The kids immediately asked if she made it. She said she didn't, but her friend looked at me and smiled. Something told me she knew that I made that piece, but I can't place what. The kids got it straight on. They knew it was a cave with a bat and a panda and a leopard living together inside. She then asked the kids if they would like to play in it, and the kids said they would. They sounded excited. They wanted to play in it and thought it was the coolest thing ever! I began to smile inside and felt a warm fuzzy I haven't felt in a long time.

Another student who was setting up then asked me "So, what do you think the odds were that you'd happen to walk by right at this very moment?" After she asked that, the smile on the inside came out, and I was beaming on cloud nine on seventh heaven.