Exposed

Sharing one's art is hard and very personal.  I rarely direct any friend or acquaintance to my site to look at my art.  I direct my students there all the time.  Some thoughts on this:

With 21 teenagers in a room together, that is a great deal of emotion.  We all have issues with mastery of the processes and machines.  Add to that the fact that I am expecting some sort of personal communication in one's creation, and you can have one hell of a hot mess.  I have had students say "you just say you like everyone's photos."  No, I do not.  Not at all.  There are few things worse than complimenting bad art to help the artist continue to make crap.  I point out what is good, and carefully point out what needs to be improved.  We do the occasional critiques.  It is amazing how a group of kids who at times seem like they cannot shut up, all of a sudden clam up.  But I do get it. It is hard to make art.  It is hard to show it to someone.  It is even harder to show it to a room full of people (strangers, friends, whatnot) and talk about it.  This is one of the reasons I make sure to show my work to my kids.  I want them to know I am a practicing artist and I want them to be comfortable with showing me their stuff because I have shown them mine.

Which brings me to showing friends my work.  I do exhibit my work and do not mind strangers looking at my art.  I will even hover near them to hear what they say about it.  But show it to friends?  Oh, hell no.  If I offer to show you my work, I am exposing something very private.  I have even reduced the number of friends I allow to see my work.  (This is because out of all the shows I have been in, only one friend ever came to see my art.)  Sure, I post pics of the stuff online, but no one looks at that.  It feel like the difference between throwing pics of my stuff into an empty road versus walking up to people and handing them my pics and asking for feedback.  So when I have offered to show my work to people (in person on online) and I get no response, well, it sucks.  And a non-creative person cannot possibly understand that.

Hubby is a music type person.  He is not in a band anymore but still writes and plays.  It took him a long time to send his lyrics to me and a friend.  I made sure to read them and compliment him on them.  I understood that risk.  Even if the lyrics were not my cup of tea, I would still give positive feedback.  I would not lie and say I loved the work if I did not, but I would say something positive.  I have friends who are artists.  I support them in every way possible.  Granted, their work might not be my style, but that is besides the point.  I have gone to see friends perform even though I do not like their style of music.

That is all besides the point.  If a creative type has shared her/his art with you, be kind enough to respond.  Give feedback of some sort.  You do not have to use the words "I like it" but say something.  The silence is harsh.  I have been thinking a lot lately about how to translate my experiences to lessons in the classroom.  This is one of them.  I have asked friends to look at my art and received no feedback.  So how does this translate to the classroom?  Critiques.  Everyone staring at someone's work and saying..... NOTHING.  I can't have this happen anymore.  I have to figure out a way to get everyone to show their work comfortably and respond to classmate's work comfortably.  How to do that?  Not a clue yet, but I have a couple of weeks to figure this one out.