"How do you describe yourself as an artist? One moment I am doing one thing that could be described easily as Art and the next I am doing something else that is craft! One moment my curiosity has lead me to to look at something quite strange as beautiful like the mould that grows on food in the fridge and the next I am looking at something most people would find familiar and boring and finding it fascinating like the bubbles in the washing up water. ...... OK there is a few questions in the passage above but this month the challenge question is what do you call yourself and why?"
What I think of myself as is a contemporary quilter, I use quilting based techniques to express myself but don't always use them in a traditional way nor do I use traditional patterns. Explaining this to other people isn't quite so easy and part of this is down to my concern about what their reaction would be if I showed them the things I make. I then get into a rambling description of what I do, which doesn't work for me or my poor listener! I should take heed of Sharon's advice from the challenge description:
"One of the ways I try and make sense of what I do is by defining what ever it is, as clearly as I possibly can. .......... The way I see it is if you can’t talk about what you do, or haven’t taken care in how you think about what you do, how do you expect others to respect the way you spend your time? Or how do expect people to respect what you make?" A good point!
2 comments:
Hi Linda
What an interesting challenge Sharon has set here, and I think she's so right about how we think about what we do affects other people's evaluation of our work.
Good luck with the challenge.
What a good point! And that is why I describe myself as a 'textile artist' and the place I work as my 'studio' - if you don't take yourself serious, why would others?
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