Artist Statement

I've been revising my artist statement slowly over the weekend and I'm pretty happy with the outcome. I really like the idea of having a statement that is eloquent but short and sweet. I have a subscription to the magazine, "New American Paintings", and just received one in the mail last week. Each issue is done regionally and is juried by a guest curator. It's more like a catalog than a magazine, done alphabetically ordered with 3 pieces per artist and includes a C.V., bio and statement for each artist. It's been a great reference for me. Some of them are a little more flowery than I'd like my own to be, but nonetheless, helpful to read. I'm going out of town this Wednesday, so I'm going to miss the second artist statement workshop, which is sad. Maybe I can get someone to give me private feedback?
I drove up to Gail Dawson's show at the Dominican University in San Rafael this Saturday. Having been a student of hers for a couple of years and only having seen one live piece of her work, it was great to see it up close and personal. I was totally blown away by the amount of work that goes into the video pieces. 24 (?) paintings only take up one second of video. That's a huge project to tackle.

During my last semester at SFSU, I've been fortunate to be enrolled in a class that has only 8 students, meets twice a week for 3 hours, and is designed to answer questions and prepare us for professional practices in art. It may as well be a graduate seminar. In the first 3 weeks, I've acquired more valuable tools than in my many (MANY!) years of studio practice and studying art history.

Last week we were each asked to write a 500 word, first draft of our artist statement and give copies to each other. During class, each statement was allowed a good chunk of time for work shopping and feedback. This is one example of how amazing this class is. How often do you get direct, verbal feedback from 8 people? Not only did I learn valuable things about my own work, but each statement brought up questions that we could all take a little gem of knowledge from. There was such an information overload in those 6 hours that my head is still swimming. I guess that's why we have 17 weeks.