Good grades and more

Received my grades for last semester, and they were all A's with one A- (in traditional printmaking, which I feel is my weakest studio class), I'll try harder this next semester to see if I can't remove the -

It was a really fun semester and I felt like I was running/working all the time even though it was only 15 credits (Painting, Video Art/Editing, Printmaking, Drawing Applications, Modern Art History).

Next semester is a full 18 credits with some heavy duty HS (which I need a lot of to finish the BFA), spring classes include Painting2, Video2, Printmaking2, Advanced Digital Imaging, Theory and Practice of Visual Art Criticism, and The Intellectual History of Western Civilization. Should be fun and very interesting.

Here's a favorite Robert Genn letter from November that I never got around to posting. Once again he's got a great site for artists at http://www.painterskeys.com and as always his letters are posted with his permission.

Ignorance

November 25, 2005

Yesterday my friend Joe Blodgett brought a big yellow print
into the studio. It was sort of modern, with a large,
indecipherable signature across the lower end. "What do you
think of this?" he asked. "Interesting," I said, which is what
I say when I don't know what to say. "Why don't you run it
through those 'evaluation points' that you use when you jury?"
he suggested. I protested that my points were subject to
modification--sometimes there's something major that upsets
them. "Like, 'I like it,'" I said.

My evaluation points are compositional integrity, sound
craftsmanship, colour sensitivity, creative interest, design
control, gestural momentum, artistic flair, expressive
intensity, professional touch, surface quality, intellectual
depth, visual distinction, technical challenge and artistic
audacity. If you were to assign a maximum value of 10 to each
of these fourteen points, an almost impossible 140 would be the
top mark. Loosely speaking, a total of around 50 is often
enough for an "in." My system doesn't favour realism over
non-objective work, but my jury duty has shown me that hard-won
realism often wins out with these points.

Cruising the print and looking at it in different lights over
the afternoon, I was hard pressed to find points to hand out.
It ended up with 30. While it had a sort of confident flair and
a look of audacity, it was mostly what I call "basic." As a
piece of print art--embellished or not--I saw it as
unchallenging and average. Though bright in colour, it was dull
in spirit. It suggested some sort of bare ambition--which has
its appeal, but is often not enough in the big scheme of
things. As a juried show-piece the print wouldn't make it. Mind
you, some other juror--even using the same set of points--might
have evaluated it differently. Joe phoned later and told me the
print was the work of Dale Chihuly. "Chihuly's the
internationally-known glass artist. That one is worth a couple
of thousand--edition's almost sold out." I told him I hadn't
been aware that Chihuly made prints. "That's how ignorant you
are," said Joe.

I've asked Andrew to illustrate Chihuly's print in the current
clickback. See URL below. Once again I had been victimized by
my ignorance. Or was it innocence? I'll stick to my guns.
Ambition and audacity are quite frequently mistaken for talent
and value.

Best regards,

Robert

PS: "Knowing is false understanding. Not knowing is blind
ignorance." (Nan Ch'uan)

Esoterica: Do we all crave a level playing field? It's been my
observation that innocent-eyed jurors--often from another
village--are best able to separate the better from the
poorer--the grain from the chaff. All art carries a provenance
that ranges from humble to exalted, from non-existent to
stellar. What we're looking for here is the truth. In art, is
the truth possible? "Real knowledge," said Confucius, "is to
know the extent of one's ignorance."