Opinion
By
Tim Pace
Posted: 2019-06-17T14:43:00Z
The President’s Turn
Last month’s meeting with Mark Salay was a tremendous learning experience in many ways. We learned so many different techniques that it was literally hard to keep up with all that was presented. In my honest opinion, that’s the way I had envisioned a meeting to be conducted. We can all say that we learned things that we had never expected. The greatest lesson for me came at the end of the meeting. We asked our guest presenter to be the judge for our “Presidents Challenge”. He agreed and stated that he would judge as if he were in a gallery and in charge of purchasing pieces for said gallery. He went over each piece and finally made his choice which was a good choice. He stated both the positive and the negative aspects of each piece and what he would have liked to have seen with each. Not a bad process for sure. The learning for me came in an unexpected way. When the judge began to point out the flaws with each piece, he did so without exception. He spoke about everything from design to finish. He was honest and did what we asked him to do. In the course of the judging, I wondered how it made the artist feel to be so bluntly criticized. It was not done with malice but still it must have been hard to hear the comments. Our artists took the comments in stride and even with a sense of confidence at times but still I wondered. How would I feel if it were me in the line of fire? Would I take the time to learn or to shut down out of hurt pride? Probably both in my case.
Of course, we have to take in consideration that it was only the opinion of the judge and that sometimes can be subjective and somewhat of a closed opinion. Not everyone likes the same thing and therefore would have a different opinion on any given subject matter. However, I believe it was a time for me to learn and take note of what was given. If I don’t want to know the answer, then I should not ask the question but if I don’t ask then how am I to expect to improve? This experience really has shown me how much I have grown in the art of woodturning but also how much more there is to learn.
We are hoping to bring in more challenges to our members in order to foster more learning adventures and to inspire one another to new places in our art. Don’t be afraid to enter a piece in the challenges that we have because you have a fear of being rejected. We are all in this to learn