Critique Reflection.

For our first critique this past Wednesday, I was able to gain some helpful feedback after showing these pieces below. 

These pieces were shown next to my previous work from last semester. 

This piece is a completed wood cut, that I am planning on painting and adding glass and copper to. 

This is a detail of the piece. 

In order to add more dimensions and layers to the piece I also had this completed Linocut, which I am going to collage into the piece as well. 

Some of the most important feedback I gained from the conversation:

-a reminder to push my work past a more literal narrative. The woodcut above reads very directly as a landscape. 

-inspiration to work on my assemblage craft. Being able to push the surface of the work and pull and push the layers to have them overlap. I will be working next on inlay; being able to carve areas where the copper and glass can sit beneath the surface and also, heightening the complexity of the metal elements as well by either pounding them on an anvil or allowing them to sit outside and gain some color, and more character. By doing this it may also be able to enhance the aspect of time in my pieces.

-I also want to search for greater ambiguity in the way I display content in my piece. Poetic elegance is what I am searching for. The way to hint towards experience yet not state it.

My next goals are to: 

-work on craft: playing with surface tension.

-work of having my pieces be more sculptural. Having courage to take full advantage of the wood I am using. Cutting it up, carving it, sanding it, etc.

-adding monotypes to the pieces.

-drilling holes into the pieces to wrap metal and copper wire in and out of it. 

-allowing myself less rigidity and less direct of a narrative. Reminding myself to hold the essence of content without squeezing it to tight.

Next, I was reminded to structure my artist statement in a way that is accessible to all audiences. To be more literal in my description. Maybe not literal, just approach it with simplicity . 

I will work On my artist statement and post on soon. I will not be in thesis this week, as I have a field trip but next week I will show two completed pieces and a new artist statement. 

I greatly appreciated the intensity of critiques last week ", and would like them to continue with the same amount of honesty and careful examination.