Artist Meetup Blog 11
November 2024
To Capture The Moment Itself
In this critique-centered mini-season, as we explore what we need from one another in the room, I find myself challenged here in the blog space. It’s easy to explain that feeling away, saying, “well, maybe you just ‘had to be there!’” But this blog was created—nearly a year ago now!—as a tool of accessibility, so that our community members don’t just “have to be there” each month. And so I am met with this task, to capture the moment itself rather than simply report the “minutes.”
Synthesis
I wear a lot of hats right now. I am a community organizer for Stories of Atlantic City, of course, which primarily means that I guide these meetings and write this blog; I am a writing professor at Stockton University; I run a monthly open mic at Oddball Vintage in Absecon, where there is deliberately no stage and no mic and we all just sort of stand around and play together; newly, I am leading monthly writing workshops at Hayday Coffee (throughout 2025, our gatherings will be held on the first Monday of each month at 7pm).
I think a lot about curating community, and I think a lot about the impossible-to-curate moments of unity that appear within curated spaces. Something’s been happening these last few months, as my projects begin to overlap and echo each other. They are all becoming more vulnerable, more relaxed, more trusting.
Within each space that I participate, I find familiar faces, I find new faces, and I find myself. This month’s gathering was exciting, different. We had three regular community members and four artists brand new to our meetups. Those four learned about our meetings through the experimental open mic at Oddball Vintage. With them, they brought their interpretation of that experimental energy. And so, though they had never attended our gatherings’ meetings or critiques, they carried within them something all their own, each a vision, built upon the shared experience in a different community with different rules, goals, and objectives, and that confluence of interpretation helped to color our critique.
Again, this is where I come up against a wall: how do I explain to you in a way that you can feel this complex synthesis? To be honest, I don’t yet have an answer. All I can do is tell you some of the particulars that I noticed in the room. Perhaps, as you’re reading this, you may think up a solution—in which case, please reach out and tell me how I can best record a feeling.
The Critique
As each member took their turn, I asked them to specify their needs. Some wanted technical advice, others wanted advice on the feeling or the narrative, a few simply wanted general notes, to use our gathering as a sounding board for the progress of their work.
We spent time together letting our showcasing artist guide us, and then I picked up and asked some follow-ups to help extrapolate needs a bit more for each artist. In this way, I was deliberate and delicate: a critique space is tender, and it requires trust.
Really, maybe, I would say it requires “listening” more than anything. We open up a shared space, you receive us and trust that we will be sincere with you, and when you share, we listen. Then, when you ask for advice, we listen, and we try to provide you the help you seek. Sometimes, however, I think the advice we seek can be buried beneath the surface. This is the tenuous moment that I, as the group’s facilitator, find myself weighing how much I should dig.
Here’s how I parse a critique. There are multiple realms of critique. Picking a slightly arbitrary number (I say this because you could break this sort of thing down however you like), let’s say there are five realms: concept; development; composition; detail; presentation. For me, this is sort of a funnel system. We have large scale, broad-brushstroke ideas at concept, and each subsequent realm is a “higher magnification.” As we magnify further, though, we lose sight of what’s in the periphery—is this making sense? Let’s define further.
If an artist approaches our gathering for conceptual advice, the door is immediately open to suggestions on meaning, purpose, context. More nitty-gritty suggestions are most likely also welcome, but, unrequested, they might be unnecessary at this stage because conceptual advice from a critique might help an artist decide they need to make fundamental alterations before getting back to detail.
If an artist approaches our gathering for developmental advice, they may feel that their concept is strong in a static sense, but that they are unsure of the direction they should take the piece. The magnification here is low, and we can still consider conceptual suggestions at this stage.
If an artist approaches our gathering for compositional advice, they’re starting to put multiple ideas together and they need help with assembly. At this point, it might no longer be the best help to suggest that they completely change direction or fundamentally shift the underlying idea. What can be useful here is broad suggestions for possible future projects. This sometimes doesn’t seem the most directly helpful, as the advice is not strictly about the piece being critiqued, but it can really aid in the artist feeling that their peers are “listening.” For instance, you might say, “there are some really interesting directions you could go with this, but I don’t want to interfere with the progress of this piece. However, you might consider taking some similar ideas and experimenting with x, y, or z combinations in another piece. It could help you to get a better sense of what you’re really after in this series.”
If an artist approaches our gathering for detail-oriented advice, it’s best to begin by sticking exactly to that. Detail sits on the surface of an object or an idea, and it requires that that object or idea is integral, that it has a strong enough foundation to hold and present such precise gesture. If an artist is asking for detail help, let them guide that, and really truly listen to their needs. They know their work the best. Ask follow-ups, ask if your advice sounds right, ask if they feel satisfied with the assistance.
If an artist approaches our gathering for presentation-based advice, they are likely looking for the gathering to act as “audience.” If it’s a performance–based medium, this can be a space to “focus-group” and get very specific thoughts on aspects of the presentation; if it’s a static medium, this can be a space for clarity, or assessing if the artist’s vision is in line with how our “audience” is receiving the piece.
Parallel examples
Two artists in the room were looking for multiple realms of critique at once.
One, a singer-songwriter, brought two interrelated songs and was seeking thoughts on how they flow into one another, the clarity of their content, and whether the composition was too repetitive.
The other, a poet, brought two interrelated poems and was seeking suggestions on concept and development—looking to decipher a third, yet-unwritten addition to this series—as well as detail advice, such as wordiness or whether repetition of phrases increased the dramatic nature or pulled the audience from the world itself.
The advice given to both artists by our gathering was responsive and tender. They listened well, and offered ideas that addressed the concerns directly. The fact that, serendipitously, we had these two parallel examples actually seemed to help both artists, since they could, in a way, receive double the advice.
As We Conclude 2024
Turning to a new year rife with hard questions and grand fears, a brief note:
Community will always exist around you. Community will always exist within you. Anything I can do, you can do better. I write these entries as a guide in case you need it, but I trust you. I believe in you. And I believe that we will all find, in this darkest moment, the fire within us necessary to keep each other warm.
Interested in a complete and ever-expanding list of references made across all of our Artist Meetup blog entries? Visit our Artist Meetup Blog’s new Annotated Bibliography!
Our Artist Meetup series is supported by New Jersey Civic Information Consortium, a nonprofit that funds initiatives to benefit the State’s civic life and meet the evolving information needs of New Jersey’s communities. A first-in-the-nation project, the Consortium reimagines how public funding can be used to address the growing problem of news deserts, misinformation, and support more informed communities.