JJ 10

The most outside of my wheelhouse I have ever been is when proofing/giving feedback for an artist statement. My wife is a local artist and I have often given my two-cents on her statements. There is nothing more polar opposite than any type of writing I have ever had to asses than an artist statement. There are no hard and fast guidelines (scary) and it is convention to write in the third person (weird). It is also not necessarily beneficial for the text to be perfectly clear; vagueness can be used as a technique to supplement the theme of a particular exhibit. My comments used to be, "Not clear enough!", but I have tried to pivot my thinking and ignore the clarity demon on my shoulder. Instead I try to get all Zen-like and focus more on the sensations/emotions that arise when reading her statement and look for instances where, for example, convoluted sentence structure gets in the way of the feeling she is trying to put forth. An artist's statement is also something deeply personal so who am I to critique it? I would be interested in hearing from the group how they manage assessing writing that is personal and intrinsic to the writer. It seems to me that the opportunity for critique is diminished the more personal the writing because, at the extreme, you may be critiquing that person, not just their writing.

Comments

  1. DariusApril 9, 2019 at 6:18 AM

    I like your idea of the "clarity demon on my shoulder," JJ, since that seems to be my problem across the board, and this can be especially problematic when negotiating a 30-minute session of more familiar assignments. In some tutoring sessions, that problem has been a point of panic for my students who feel that I'm wasting valuable time on "what something means," when I'm not addressing issues that are the reasons they scheduled an appointment. And often, I realize I need to learn how to offer help with those issues without doing the work for them. So it's a learning process still.

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