Artist Meetup Blog Entry 10
The meetups have a new face! As our arts-based programming evolves, so should its name and logo! These entries have been teasing the “artist-activist” idea now for a few months. It’s time we make it official!
Here’s the pitch:
Holistic, safe critique space is the foundation of a healthy art community—indeed, it is crucial to the civic ecosystem that artists, the vox populi, are given the space and unity to allow their critical thought to flourish.
October 2024: Our First Interdisciplinary Art Critique
“Where should we start?”
For our first-ever Interdisciplinary Art Critique, we began with a reflection of our community agreements. In our gathering space, I projected last month’s blog entry onto the wall and we discussed the points. These agreements, you may remember, are in a constant state of flux—that’s what makes them ours. We will engage with these “rules” for as long as they work for us, and when they need to be altered we will alter them. They must be non-precious.
So I introduced that night’s gathering to the agreements and I asked, “where should we start?”
We decided on two points that we should consider as a way to orient ourselves and feel like a cohesive critique space:
- What do we have in common before we even begin critiquing?
- What critical thoughts are we afraid to hear?
- In other words: before we even share our thoughts or our art work, what judgment do we hear inside of ourselves that scares us the most?
We spent time free-writing responses to these questions and then discussing our answers, investigating these feelings on the page first and then pushing a little deeper in conversation—a great warm-up for “critique.”
To the first question, I wrote:
We are all invested in listening to each other—we are all right here together. As listeners, we have in common that we want to see our fellow artists thrive, feel supported, feel that their art is special. We all want to survive through our art-making.
To the second question, I wrote:
I write really personal things—and I hide them in abstraction sometimes. I’m working on that, on bringing my art out in the open, but I’m afraid to hear my experiences and my thoughts are boring, or uninspired, or trite. I’m afraid that when I reveal myself, people will say “ew.”
This was the first time any of us had run through free-writing in response to these questions. Another group, the previous month, had created the questions, but we hadn’t tested them back then. I was surprised to see my answers to these questions staring out at me from the page. I did not expect to so easily reveal to myself such a vulnerable feeling, that I am afraid to place myself transparently on display. It seems I have work to do.
A free-write is a sacred thing. It’s like a song you sing for no one while in the shower, or a little dance you do when you’re cooking something delicious and it tastes just right. A free-write is you, a moment to see yourself, a private piece of art. Generally, these are supposed to be impermanent. For the rest of our members, they were—I only share mine here because it’s my job to talk about these sorts of things, and I love to share with you—so you won’t get the chance to read their thoughts here. But I will happily share some elements of our conversation that followed this exercise!
The Warmup: Committing to Our Agreements
Some notes from a conversation sparked by free-writing answers to the two above questions:
- “We all share a devotion to the AC arts community”
- “We are here because we desire to get better at our trades”
- “It’s easier to suggest changes when considering a piece outside of one’s own discipline”
- I think this is very directly tied to our understanding of beginner’s mind.
One member took umbrage with my note that we want to “feel that [our] art is special.” She shared an anecdote from another artist who once asked, “does art need you?” This sparked a beautiful conversation about our relationship to art and art’s relationship to us, this vibrant, ever-changing thing.
Here are some thoughts on this distinction:
When art acts as a commodity, it does not need us. It’s borne of capitalism and thrives on competition and hoarding and the soothing, numbing hypnosis of spectacle. To survive here, we need it.
(if you’re interested in reading more about the history of spectacle, this entry from the University of Chicago does a great job of giving the highlights)
When art acts as a community’s voice, it does need us: it becomes us.
For many of us who attend these gatherings, it is imperative that we consider both art as a commodity and art as voice. We are not so lucky that we can operate completely apart from the need to make money to feed ourselves. And Atlantic City, as it exists right now, communicates through capital, so it is our responsibility to understand that as best we can.
The artist who asked if we should want our art to feel special was talking particularly about our art-making within our careers: does every artist need to reinvent the wheel? I think “special” does not have to be synonymous with “new” or “previously unknown.”
But if our art is always self-portraiture—and I believe that it is—then we should feel allowed to give it some love! Why does the internal judge always get to have all the fun? It’s time we humor ourselves a little bit! We can feel special and we can feel that our art is special. This life is a hard one. For many of us, it is an all-consuming passion. It is okay to pause every once in a while, ground ourselves, breathe, and reflect on the beauty we create.
The Critique: “Don’t clean it up”
What would it feel like to un-know your voice? Let that question be literal or metaphorical, whichever resonates more for you.
As noted above, one artist of this month’s gathering suggested it’s easier to critique works that are outside of our own specialties, presumably because we have less knowledge of tradition, technique, history, or value obscuring our views.
To un-recognize the sound of your own voices could bring you the pleasure of meeting that voice anew. To indulge the practice of temporarily un-learning the qualities that make up your creative “voice” could allow you to practice things you might have previously thought “unlike” you.
For this first critique, we were graced with unfinished pieces. Reflecting here, I am struck with a deep sense of gratitude that anyone would feel safe enough to share their unfinished selves with us.
To highlight a particular session of critique during the evening:
A painter took the stage, displaying two pieces. Guided by our agreements, I wrote on the whiteboard some of the advice she was after. Primarily, she was interested in our thoughts on shape, form, and color. We chatted about the pieces, some as fellow painters and others as artists who have never practiced the form at all.
In one profound moment of connection, another, more seasoned painter suggested that one of the pieces, an unfinished self-portrait, might only reveal its needs to become “finished” in a decade or two—of course, this was a playful way of expressing that art often evades our requests to “perform” for us. Our art is our deepest self, and it takes a lifetime to meet that self in full.
Maybe it isn’t our job to “clean up” our art at all, but simply to share it as reflections of our selves.
A final note
Over the course of the night, we developed an additional line to the community agreements:
- What does the artist intend to communicate?
This extra line allowed the member asking for feedback to help prompt specific feedback. It’s similar, but perhaps more pointed, than another of our agreements: “What do you need from this particular critique?”
Asking what the artist seeks to communicate offers space for any number of prompts. The artist could say they aren’t yet sure, or that they know an abstract aspect of what they want to communicate to their audience, but that they don’t yet know how to translate it into their piece.
As our critiques continue—and continue they will!—we’ll keep ourselves ever-open to the possibility of additions (or even alterations) to our agreements. As such, we will also begin collecting these agreements and place them in their own page. This page will showcase our critique-specific community agreements, yes, but it will also be the space for us to begin to curate a set of community-wide guidelines.
This is something our membership has discussed since spring of this year! In fact, it is the very thing that has guided me toward offering these meetups as “artist-activist”-based programming. On many occasions, our members have expressed frustration that there is no easily visible set of ethical standards that we can all look to as a guiding light. Well, now there can be! The Stories of Atlantic City Artist-Activist Meetup membership will create one, together.
Expect to see this new page develop in the coming month or two. Until then, I hope to see you at our November 15th and December 14th critique sessions! (learn more and RSVP here)
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.