the ugly truth about critique

actual students after an actual sculpture critique

Just like you, I’m a sucker for reposting an Instagram post that seems to support some idea I agree with.  We both know that there’s also data to prove the opposing view, but we smile, share the post to our story and hope our viewers see the exterior validation for ideas they know we hold dear.

Recently, the algorithm has been showing me some of those social media teachers who are supposed to be excellent teachers and social media savvy at the same time.  Many are art teachers and many share funny stories, good ideas and their hot takes on how to teach art.  Only a few are university level studio art teachers, but I still consider their posts and their thoughts on all things art teachery.  In the past week, I’ve noticed a few posts about studio art critiques and what those should and shouldn’t be.  Specifically, these teachers have called out negative critique experiences and proposed that critiques should be positive experiences for students.  I politely disagree.

Forgive me for my sarcasm, but students don’t always know best when it comes to their education and often times, true education can come from uncomfortable experiences.

Flashback to the fall of 1990.  I had my very first critique ever at the university level in the basement of Roddey Apartments.  The art building was closed for major renovations during my freshman year and our Foundations classes met in a dark basement with exposed plumbing just a few inches from your head when you were standing.  During our class times, every time a resident on the first floor flushed a toilet, we heard it loud and clear and you could even trace the flow of water from the source to the edge of the building.  

My professor for 2D Design was Paul Martyka, who to me at that time, was a total stranger.  I actually thought a nontraditional student named Billy was my professor on the first day of class.  Turns out he was just as lost as I was when the small framed, scraggly man walked in an announced that this was his class.  Mr. Martyka quickly became an enigmatic and legendary figure in my personal art school journey and you can find a whole post about him somewhere on this blog if you’re interested.  

At the first project critique, Mr. Martyka told us to pin our compositions up on the wall in a straight line.  He vigorously mocked us for not creating the straight line he asked for and then called on individual students to go back up and properly align their projects with the others.  I was sweating already.  The critique was brutal.  That’s the word I’d use to describe the experience.  Mr. Martyka would ask us to talk about each one in order from left to right and he’d ask very specific and thought provoking questions to each student.  He put each one of us on the spot.  When he shined his spotlight of attention on you, there was nowhere to run. You were going to answer his questions and bear the brunt of his laser-sharp attention until he decided it was time to move on.  Make no mistake, he knew you were uncomfortable.  He knew that discomfort was good for you.

Back then, we didn’t have anxiety and Mr. Martyka wouldn’t have cared if we did.  If you couldn’t bear the weight of attention on your artwork or you couldn’t sufficiently answer questions about your artwork, you needed to find another place to be.  It was a three hour hell.  A three hour hell that was punctuated by his infamous final act of critique:  the moment when he walked up to the wall and silently arranged all the projects in order from best to worst.  This took several minutes and you just had to sit there and endure it.  

I thought of Mr. Martyka’s critiques when I read a teacher post about how critiques should be a positive experience and that if students leave a critique feeling down, the teacher has failed.  Yeah, I beg to differ.  

The reason that logical conclusion isn’t so logical begins with Mr. Martyka.  I fully understand that Mr. Martyka’s critiques and teaching led some students to feel unsuccessful, to question their career goals and to (in some cases) change their majors.  I see this as him doing the students a favor.  You may disagree, but please hear me out.  Art is hard.  Careers in art are competitive, stressful and….brutal.  Mr. Martyka would not be doing you a favor if he didn’t prepare you for that in his classes.  I also know that many students, like me, accepted the challenges issued by Mr. Martyka and worked ever harder to rise to meet his ridiculously high expectations.  I made a C on the first project he graded of mine.  By Thanksgiving break, I had worked my way up to a B average.  The blood, sweat and tears I puddled up between Thanksgiving break and final exams earned me an A-.  

A bit of a side track here, but in 1990, we didn’t have the ease of email to communicate with our professors.  If you wanted to ask a question outside of class, you had to leave your dorm and walk across campus to the professor’s office.  If the sun was still up, you didn’t find Mr. Martyka.  You could leave a note on his door or you could just come back later.  In this calmer, less technologically intrusive world, Mr. Martyka offered us a cool option if we wanted to know our final grade for his class after our final critique.  We could leave him a self-addressed, stamped postcard or envelope and he’d write our grade and drop it in the mail.  As a creative art student, I opted to make my own postcard collage to leave with him and when I got mine in the mail, there was nothing written by him in the designated postcard area.  After a bit of an investigation, I noticed he had cut into my postal creation and then sealed the incision up with tape.  I carefully cut it open and found simply “A-“ written in pencil inside.  He was always three steps ahead of me.  

Of course, feeling the burn of the Instagram teacher claiming that all critiques should feel good, I had to think about my own critiques.  I’m no Mr. Martyka but I like to think that my critiques are serious, thoughtful opportunities to learn even more from a just completed project.  I agree that critiques are not excuses to negatively slam students and simply criticize their work.  I understand that many have that impression, but I believe they have that impression because they had bad professors and teachers.  I believe a critique should offer the opportunity for peers, teachers and the artists to all have a time of accurate analyzation and contemplation about a work of art.  Doing so effectively, requires this one thing that also gets labeled as negative.  Honesty.

Yeah, a real dirty word it seems.  

You can’t have an effective critique without honesty.  I teach this to my students on the first day of critique.  If the teacher/professor cultivates and manages to maintain an atmosphere of honesty during critique, your resulting feelings may have much more to do with how you feel about honesty.  Everyone thinks they want honesty until they get it.  That’s when you realize that honesty isn’t just people saying nice things to you.  Sometimes the truth hurts.

An effective critique involves careful consideration of all aspects of a work of art from the most basic to the most complex.  It should be evidence-based and it is definitely not about opinions or feelings.  Critique language is professional and thoughtful.  This is like a medical procedure.  We go in, do what we need to do and we get out.  Emotions are not needed nor are they welcome.  

An effective critique does not criticize the artist.  You may have to question some of the artist’s choices, motives and actions, but you’re always addressing the visual and physical evidence in the work, you’re not critiquing the artist.  I tell students to separate themselves from the work of art.  They are not their work.  But I also have to tell them to cry outside the studio.  

Tears and emotions are a natural part of the college critique.  Just as they are a natural part of every tough exam or project at this level.  I’d wager that 90% of the tears shed as a result of one of my critiques were shed because of the build-up of stress and anxiety rather than because of something that was said during the actual critique.  Sure, words can bring us face to face with our emotions and it may only take one less-than-positive observation to send a sensitive student over the cliff of tears, but they’re still not crying because they were verbally attacked.  

Students may feel emotions over knowing they did not do their best.  They may be embarrassed that their lack of time management.  They may feel outed when the shortcuts they took on a process are on display for everyone to see.  Many students have only ever had to try to meet expectations in their previous educational experiences and now that more is being expected, they may struggle to rise to the new challenge.  That realization can hurt.  

With emotions like those running at high levels at the completion of a difficult project, honesty can be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.  

I keep the reigns of critique held tightly in my hands as we look at each project and make observations and judgments.  I demonstrate how to state something honestly without being insulting.  I stop students when they seem to be on a verbal assault.  I force them to prove everything they say by noting the visual evidence before them.  This usually puts a stop to mean spirited comments and turns the spotlight back onto the person attempting to be mean.  I also make sure that students know when they’ve done something well.  Honesty goes both ways and I’m just as eager to point out the good as the bad.  In fact, contrary to what students may think, I’m more eager to point out the good.  After all that manual labor and all my urging in the studio, it’s really important to let students know what they did well.

The information provided in critique is just that…information.  Students who want to succeed will take the information provided about their artwork and consider how to apply that information in the future.  They’ll use critique as an extension of the project and remember what they need to do better in the future, while keeping and nurturing strengths that were pointed out.  Critique is more than just a public viewing of strengths and weaknesses.  Done correctly, it’s a powerful teaching tool.

porch sittin'

my front porch view

During one of my summer adventures, I had the joy of spending several days at South Porch Artist Residency in Summerville, SC.  This was my second time staying briefly with Brad and Brian in their beautiful historic home.  The white picket fence, the towering live oak trees and the perfect front porch all scream “southern charm” just as much as the hot, humid summer air.  This place is perfection and so are Brad and Brian.  When I’m there, I feel as if I’ve been adopted into the family.  

My week was packed with creative activities on a very tight schedule, but in all of my frantic coming and going, I noticed that I would see Brad and or Brian each night on the front porch.  At first I thought this odd because, who sits out on the porch bathing in mosquitos and shirt-soaking humidity in July in the South?  With a second glance, I noticed the giant oscillating fan inches from their perch.  A perfect solution to keeping mosquitos away and keeping cool in the soupy night air.  

On my last day there, I had a few minutes to talk with Brad and Brian on the porch and I used that as an opportunity to look around and see their front porch setup.  It was clear they used the porch as an extension of the house.  It was an office annex where they could get work done but also listen to the cicadas, watch the birds and feel the breeze blow from the trees.  I was inspired.  

During my second year of undergrad, my roommate, Chad, and I got bored one fall evening and decided to go for a walk around the beautiful, Southern campus.  Winthrop University had (and has) so many courtyards, colonnades and front porches rich with white wooden rocking chairs.  We noticed the lines of empty rockers and decided that we would simply take over a few of those chairs and sit.  To us non-partying art kids, this provided a bit of a fresh perspective on our small world.  We would get bored in our dorm, head out to find a suitable pair of rocking chairs and we’d sit and be goofy for a while, laughing and cackling  until we decided to head back to our dorm.  Brad and Brian had reawakened that memory for me.  

Driving home from South Porch in July, I thought about that inspiration.  I was inspired by the use of the porch and I also just happened to have a front porch of my own.  I knew that I was romanticizing my own porch sitting possibilities and that I would have some personal obstacles to overcome.  I understood that it would be very difficult for me to sit still on the porch.  That stillness is what I coveted when I saw Brad and Brian sitting on their porch.  My buzzing week of activity stood in contrast to my (probably incorrect) outside perception of their nightly peaceful porch sits.  I wanted to sit on my porch, but I also wanted to be able to be still long enough to enjoy sitting on my porch.  My summer of art adventures was not going to slow down for another few weeks, but even a night or two of sitting over a week or two might still do me some good.

I also had a whole lot of daily responsibilities lined up for each summer day and beyond.  Aside from the summer art adventures, I would need to set aside time in the evenings to go to cross country practice, eat dinner when we returned, clean up the kitchen after dinner, shower, handle emails, prepare art for delivery, plan upcoming trips and still make time for nightly TV time with Blue and Violet.  I knew it would be weird in that rush of nightly activity to hit pause and tell everyone to hang on a few minutes while I sit quietly outside on the porch.

At dinner one night, I explained Brad and Brian’s nightly ritual and how cool I thought it was.  This was me preparing the way.  Then I got up from dinner, cleaned the kitchen and announced I would be outside for a while.  I turned my fan on high, stole a rocking chair from inside and sat on my porch.  The sound of the cicadas and katydids was overwhelmingly loud.  I’m sure there were crickets in there too.  My personal army of hummingbirds quickly got used to my presence and began to ignore me while fighting and chirping over the feeders.  The sun was setting behind the house and the clouds on the horizon in front of me reflected the warm colors of the sunset.  My view was green, blue, orange and beautiful.  I went inside a while later with several mosquito bites on my head.  

I realized I needed to make some adjustments for my next porch sit.  I would need sleeves to keep the mosquitos off the backs of my arms.  I would probably need a hood over my bald, mosquito landing pad of a head.  I tried not to scratch the itchy lumps on my head and headed back out the next night undeterred.  The thin camo long sleeve hoodie was perfect.  My arms and head how had a layer of protection and on the cooler nights, it wasn’t too warm with the fan on high.  I added another chair for a side table to sit drinks, sketchbooks and computers on.  It was a bit redneck, but my porch sits were getting more convenient, more cozy.

Sitting still was and is the most fierce enemy of my porch sits.  As soon as I sit and my brain registers that I’m still, it kicks into high gear.  “Don’t forget you have to do that.  Maybe you should go do it now.  You haven’t checked your emails in a while.  Did you get into that show?  Maybe you should check.  Remember the email you forgot?  Now would be a good time to answer it.  Dude, the grass needs cutting.  When are you going to take care of those vines and limbs?  You could just run grab the pruners and cut those right now and it would be done.”  The commentary is nonstop.  Don’t worry, I’m still undiagnosed, so it’s ok.  

The stillness was what made it worthwhile at the same time.  It’s not really a physical rest for me so much as it is a mental rest.  Maybe rest isn’t even the most accurate word.  There’s definitely something that happens out there, whether it’s a 5 minute sit or a 30 minute sit.  Even if I give in and check my phone or text someone, there’s something that happens that is, perhaps, spiritual.  Sitting outside and getting tuned into the sights and sounds of nature is a bit of a reset.  It’s hard to be annoyed when an iridescent green hummingbird is hovering a foot from your face to see if you pose a threat.  It’s tough to remember the bad parts of your day when you’re surrounded by the saturated colors of summer.  It’s difficult to hear the negative voices when you have a chorus of cicadas in your ears.  

I have a lot of improvements to make in order to perfect my porch sits, but I’m out here, right now working on it.  There’s a cricket to my right sounding off periodically.  The hummingbirds have called it a day and I know soon they’ll head back to Central and South America.  The tree tops are gently swaying in a light breeze and at 7:23 pm, they’re almost just dark silhouettes against a sky that was blue just a moment ago.  There’s an orb weaver spider working on his sticky architecture beside the porch column and there are bats flitting through their nightly acrobatic routines in front of me.  It’s kind of magical out here.  

the trouble with truth

My last post on Sep 22 was about me freaking out over a piece of truth.  Going about a normal day, I got an email that forced my mind to realize that I didn’t have any art out on exhibit at that moment.  That realization sent me down an emotional rabbit hole, had my brain flooded with thoughts and worries for a few days and eventually led to me sitting down and writing out my thoughts to share.  

I was checking my phone this week and I got an email reminding me about an upcoming reception/awards announcement.  I paused.  Wait.  What?  Was I in that show?  Oh no.  I do remember planning to deliver two sculptures to that exhibit.  Did I forget?  That would be ridiculously unprofessional.  Or did I deliver them and forget the exhibit?  Is that worse?  Didn’t I just write a blog post about not being in a show?  Was I wrong?

A while later I sat down at my computer and searched my emails.  There it was, back in July.  Apparently I did deliver them, though, I honestly have no recollection of that.  As a visual person with a busy mind, this happens sometimes.  If I have a lot of things going on, I’m lucky to remember all the things I have to do in a day and if a day is busy and nothing freakish or visually interesting stands out that day, it’s possible I will stop on my way to cross country practice in the middle of summer, drop off a couple of small sculptures in a rush and then continue on to practice, run 3-5 miles, drive home, work on preparing for upcoming classes, spend time on a drawing, plan two trips to Chapel Hill, take down a solo exhibit in Summerville and totally forget about dropping off the two small sculptures.  For the record, Violet had hip surgery somewhere in there too.  (Yes, the little blue sculpture in the poster and fliers for the exhibit is mine, making it even more terrible that I forgot.)

But I didn’t sit down to write about forgetting things today.  I’m here because I was thinking about truth.  

When I was a sophomore in college, I knew the truth.  I used to walk by this building with a big cornerstone with the inscription “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free”.  I knew this was from John 8:32 in the Bible because I was a good little church boy who grew up being told what the truth was.  Specifically, I was told that my religion had the real truth and that no other religion did.  This implied that truth existed, it could be found by humans and that I had found it.  Just think about that.  Me, a country guy from South Carolina.  I found the Universal Truth before I even turned 18.

This made being sure of everything easy.  Every argument or discussion could be boiled down to black or white, good or evil, right or wrong.  And since I knew the truth, I always knew where I stood.  However, as time went on and life gave me more and more experiences, I found it more and more difficult to break everything down into black and white, good or evil, right or wrong.  (Writer’s note:  I use “black or white” as it was used in religious jargon.  I was taught that everything was black or white in terms of morality or Biblical truth.  There were no “gray areas”.  Gray areas suggested that truth may not really exist.  Just making sure this is not interpreted as any sort of racial terminology.  Some of those people were quite racist too, but they used different jargon for that.)  My religious upbringing had prepared me for this.  I was taught, mostly indirectly, that education was tied to “liberal” thoughts and that I would need to be on guard in college and grad school or I could be infected with a “thinking too much disease”.  I might start questioning things that shouldn’t be questioned.  I might have my faith shaken off its foundation.  

I’ll save you all the stories but here’s the spoiler:  I did start questioning everything and while my faith in God was never shaken off its foundation, my faith in the “people of God” was.  Fast forward to this week when political faces on screens open a meeting by invoking the name of God in prayer and then talk about the importance of killing, the need to remove all empathy and how only a select few are fit to do all that killing and unempathetic thinking.  Churches I’ve attended refuse to use their own holy book to condemn the court recorded activities of certain people in power because they think they can use those people to get the Ten Commandments posted in schools or abortions made illegal.  

Dang, we got in the deep water fast, didn’t we?  Oops. 

We’ve lived in a social climate for a decade or two now where truth depends on opinion.  Leaders and respected adults have told us what was “true” without presenting any evidence to support their claims.  Worse, we’ve allowed them to do so without question or any investigation.  We’ve just nodded and voted and moved on.  With the proliferation of Facebook, “fake news” and now AI, who even knows what truth is anymore?  Doesn’t truth now depend on your belief system, your politics or your own personal to-do list?  Forget the facts, if something feels true these days, it’s truth.  

So I’m on my computer, looking at old emails and I remember that what I wrote here on Sep 22 was not actually true.  I sent myself into a black hole of self-doubt and mental torment because I wasn’t in any exhibits and it wasn’t even true.  What I thought was true in my head, was not, in fact, supported by evidence.  I’m over here whining about not having art out in the world and my two sweet little sculptures are sitting under bright lights, making people smile and wondering how I could forget about them.

Y’all know I try to keep a record of the exhibits and opportunities I get accepted into and rejected from.  I started that because it always felt like I was getting rejected.  It was easy to remember the pain of not getting into that exhibit, but so easy to forget getting into that other one.  I remember the exact wording of the rejection letter from that great juror but I forgot the award I won.  I felt like a failure because I couldn’t remember succeeding.  I did not “know” the truth and I wasn’t free.  

I’m not just rambling.  This smaller scale story of not being able to find the truth is directly related to that larger scale story of the human race not being able to discern truth.  When we lose the ability to know what truth is in the minutia of our daily lives, it’s easier for us to lose a grip on what truth is on a larger scale.  

I believe you find truth through questions.  Any religion, group or individual who tells you to not ask questions is a religion, group or individual wanting to have complete control over you.  They know you find truth through questions and they don’t want you to find truth.  

And when your religious knee jerks and you want to disagree with me, I’ll ask that you pause and think about the questions asked in your holy text.  Just one example from my own religious upbringing, one of Jesus’ favorite things to do was to answer a question with a question.  Remember that bracelet you wore 10 years ago?  What would Jesus do?  He would ask a question.  Thinking isn’t a sin.  It’s how you find truth.  

I’m lucky I get to teach critical thinking skills on a daily basis at my job.  In order to critique a work of art, you have to be able to isolate feelings and emotions from the conversation.  You have to look carefully at the visual evidence present and be able to fully analyze that evidence.  Then you put all that information together and make judgments based on the evidence.  You’re asking questions and finding answers based on evidence.  This brings you to the truth.  

Many of us are at the point where we just want to let Google do our thinking for us so we can get back to watching our Tiktoks.  Maybe we just want to react to our emotions and make choices based on how we feel rather than based on evidence.  But, feelings aren’t truth.  

Everyone gets discouraged from time to time but we have to remember that our feelings aren’t truth.  When our feelings don’t match up with reality, we lose truth in all the small ways and in all the big ways.