{"id":2877,"date":"2013-03-17T14:00:13","date_gmt":"2013-03-17T20:00:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/daveonline.net\/thepolymerarts.com\/blog\/?p=2877"},"modified":"2013-03-17T11:30:56","modified_gmt":"2013-03-17T17:30:56","slug":"the-criticism-we-need","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thepolymerarts.com\/blog\/the-criticism-we-need\/","title":{"rendered":"The Criticism We Need"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"courage,criticism,critique,life,quotes,freiheit-10f4778fb3d5c937dcc1a566b206e2a3_h\"<\/a><\/p>\n

A large part of the conversation this week at Synergy had to do with our avoidance of constructive criticism. The consensus was\u00a0unanimous\u00a0– criticism\u00a0is necessary to our growth and improvement as artists and community, but the hurdles we have to overcome to change a culture of “Like” into a supportive culture of thoughtful examination are huge. According to surveys conducted for this convention, the vast majority of polymer artists create because it is a source of enjoyment, not because they are trying to make a living off of it or get into galleries or museums. With such a base and the pervasive nature of our internet dependent community, it will be difficult for us to get even a fraction of\u00a0our folks into a habit of giving and graciously accepting criticism of our artwork.<\/p>\n

However, avoiding criticism does reduce the effectiveness of our efforts to grow the polymer image from hobbyist craft medium, to a serious fine art form. More so, we still need our hobbyists, and the criticism is not going to be – and should not be –\u00a0an integral part of their process. Sometimes we should just enjoy the process of creating. But for the serious artists in our community, criticism needs to be seen as essential and, someday, common. Because the inverse of the quote above is true … what we do will mean next to nothing if we avoid criticism and the opportunity to improve our visual communication with the world we present our work to.<\/p>\n

Okay … I got all kinds of serious. Perhaps its because last night was so not serious. Our closing banquet was fraught with silliness, innuendo, and wonderfully warm camaraderie. Our sides and faces hurt from laughing but the conviviality assisted the auction raising efforts. I don’t have the numbers, but I hear we raised a record amount to help the IPCA continue its efforts and changes we are hearing about.<\/p>\n

Now off to the American Craft Council show to see what else is going on in the craft world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A large part of the conversation this week at Synergy had to do with our avoidance of constructive criticism. The consensus was\u00a0unanimous\u00a0– criticism\u00a0is necessary to our growth and improvement as artists and community, but the hurdles we have to overcome to change a culture of “Like” into a supportive culture of thoughtful examination are huge.…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,10,24],"tags":[32,31,260],"class_list":["post-2877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-polymer-community-news","category-polymer-issues","category-ponderings","tag-constructive-criticism","tag-criticism","tag-synergy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2O0Lm-Kp","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepolymerarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepolymerarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepolymerarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepolymerarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepolymerarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepolymerarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2877\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thepolymerarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepolymerarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thepolymerarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}