In viewing the artwork she became quiet and took the piece under consideration as the object of her contemplation. Then, she took us all on a tour of what she saw and how she responded to the piece. She responded to each element—texture, color, shape—and how it affected her feelings and body. Her response to our artwork was fully considered and intimate.

She was there for us, not to make herself more grand. She was there to help us and to know our art and art-making more fully. If there were goofs, gaps, or gaffes in our work, she knew how to point these out very gently.

Her seeds rooted in me and bear fruit even today, ten years later. I feel that she is one of the art mothers that the world needs now. I call on us all to be art mothers and fathers…to nurture each other in our work as well we might and to be fully present to find out what it is that is wanted and being asked for during critique.

Worthwhile critiquing requires that we take responsibility for our work and the kind of feedback we want on that work—and when. As writers we may need to give voice to the work, to feel encouraged, to ask about a particular technical issue, or to wonder what responses the work evokes. Finally, after the critique, there are so many voices to sort out.

In the end, only the author knows. For years I wrote vignettes that were on the edge of prose and poetry. I asked the local critique group I regularly attended which way I should go with them. I never received a satisfying answer. I just kept writing them.

Finally, eight years later, putting together my first book of poetry, I discovered these vignettes, slightly re-written, fit neatly into my collection of story-poems Sightlines: A Poet’s Diary. All my doubt cleared and, with delight, I found significant locations for each of the vignettes I’d written in my younger life as a writer.

Similarly, there are times to write with the door closed, not discussing our projects, not sharing the work with others, and letting it build power inside us before unveiling it to the world.

The art of the critique is an on-going lesson we learn as writers and artists in association with our colleagues. When you receive an artful critique, take it in, hug it close to your heart, and use it as the food it is to improve your work and the art of your own critiquing.

I chose the California College of Arts and Crafts over the San Francisco Arts Institute because it was known to be project-centered, whereas the style of instruction at the Arts Institute was said to be more open-ended—just put the students in their studios and see what happened. Both produced results. But, since I was arriving in art school at mid-life, I opted for more focused results.

Hand-in-glove with the project-centered approach was a central role of critiquing as a method of learning. Every two weeks, in every studio class I took, my project was put up for formal critique. Since I’d already fulfilled my academic requirements for my degree, the only non-studio classes I took were art history. Therefore, it happened during the three years I worked on my degree, that I might be putting up as many as five projects for critique simultaneously.

What does this mean to put projects up for critique? The project—be it painting, handcrafted book, sculpture, performance—must be completed. The artist has a short statement about the work and selects a clean way to present the work. The artist identifies the issues she wants the viewers to observe and discuss.

Ideally, during the discussion, someone takes notes, and afterwards, the students and teachers participating in the critique write down their comments and present these to the artist. The written comments help because presenting one’s work is such an emotionally charged event that if the comments aren’t written down, it’s easy to forget what was said, or to misconstrue what was meant. Over the course of presenting work for critique, I began to format detailed questionnaires to pass out to make it easier to get the information I needed.

Critique and the act of giving a critique are widely mid-understood. The American Heritage Dictionary gives the first definition as: “A critical review or commentary, especially one dealing with a literary or other artistic work.” And, the third definition as: “The art of criticism.” What is this art? Close at hand in the dictionary is the word “criterion” which is said to be “a standard, rule, or test on which a judgment or decision can be based.” This word and “critique” and “criticism” all come from Greek origins. Here, the root Greek work, krites is a judge or umpire and krinein means “to separate, choose.”

I feel these are the matters at the heart of critique. Under “critic” we have as the first meaning “One who forms and expresses judgments of the merits and faults of anything, and second meaning, “A specialist in the explication and judgment of literary or artistic works.” Often, during critique, there is at least one person who takes upon themselves the third meaning of critic, “A person who finds fault; a severe judge.” The fourth meaning is marked obsolete, but to my mind, is more to the point: “A critique, from Latin criticus, “from the adjective, decisive, from the Greek kritikos, able to discern.” Discernment is the faculty that is being trained during critique—both for those commenting and the person whose work is being commented upon.

The critique period is rife for misuse because egos are hard to master on either side of the process. I’m surprised there aren’t plays, comic strips, and situation comedies demonstrating the stereotypes of personality traits that surface during critique: the Ding-Bat, the Sonorous Voice, the Professor, the Mean Person, the Raconteur and so on. Often there is a scoring of points during critique leading it to turn into a blood sport.

The critique can leave the artist and her work far behind as other social and personal agendas rocket to the forefront. To sit back and observe critique as a sociologist, anthropologist, and psychologist might is not a badly entertaining pastime, as long as your own work is not at the stake.

I once cried during a critique. It was an upper-level course on visual story telling taught by two eminent people in their fields of photography. I had written a letter to get into the course, petitioning that it serve to fulfill a lower-level requirement I felt I’d already learned through life experience. I’d gotten in, participated, but then blew it by crying during a critique of my work, in which I felt my work eclipsed by too many ricocheting rays of agendas.

Before the next session the two instructors ambushed me at the top of the stairs and strongly suggested, almost to the point of threat, that I drop the course. Crying during critique, they felt, was an ultimate bumble and upset the class. Neither crying nor the person crying the tears, could be allowed in their sphere. I felt as if I were back in my elementary schoolyard fending off bullies in the playground, but I held my ground with them at the top of those stairs and went on to stay the course and earn an “A.”

(Part II, conclusion, runs tomorrow)