PHO 433 Studio Practice
2022 FALL
Writing and talking about your work is just as important as creating your work. Here’s a list of tasks to complete throughout the semester that will help you write and talk about your own projects.
It’s best to do a little each week so it’s not so daunting. Start with the 5 words assignment and knock out a question or two at a time. Before you know it, you will have a more complete understanding of your own work. Later in the semester, you can pull from the answers to complete your artist statement.
Part One
5 words. This exercise is aimed to give you diverse and critical approaches to writing about your work. Consider your work in its totality. Select 5 words that could best describe your work.
Part Two
Using 3 of those words write one sentence about your work as objectively as you can. Then using 3 words (the same or different from your first statement) write one poetic sentence about your work.
Part Three
Are there biographical sources for your work?
What are the concerns that compel you to make art?
What cultural issues and ideas are at play in your work (ideas emerging from all aspects of knowledge and experience, not only fine art?
How would you place yourself within any tradition of the past or any aspects of contemporary art?
What are your thoughts about an audience or a physical context for your work?
Give a thorough description of the physical appearance of your work (including form, materials, surface, scale, format, and subject) that will enable a reader who has never seen your work to visualize it.
To what set of viewers is your work directed and what impact do you hope your work will have on them?
What are your desires for your work?
What art historical influences have most affected you and your work?
What autobiographical memories have influenced your work?
What ideas –– social, political, cultural, scientific, philosophical or other than aesthetic–– have had an influence on your work?
What is your view of what is happening in the flow of new ideas and styles in art today and have any of these ideas and styles had an impact on your work?