Coming off of my birthday weekend, I gave a workshop for teaching artists of Mural Arts Philadelphia this morning. Things seemed to go well since this was the first time I'd led an activity in a workshop like this for peers. The actual first workshop ever was last spring with some of Brad Carney's Mural Arts Education students at George Washington High School in northeast Philly. This workshop was focused on showing the participants how they can use translucent materials like tracing paper or drafting paper to create interesting layering effects in their work.
It's very educational when you have to interpret what you do in your studio practice for other people in a situation like this that demands clarity of communication and thought. You have to really look deeply at what you do in the studio and find ways of connecting people with what's mostly in your head otherwise. What seems simple to you can be a complete mystery to others, even artists. We all have our own experiences with making art that are often as completely singular as we are as individuals. That makes sense for obvious reasons, but we don't often think about that because of the myopic lens through which most of us look at the world.
That's not an indictment, I'm just stating what I see as a part of the human experience. All of us are made up of what ever experiences we have and tend to look at the world in a particular way as a result. Problems occur when we can't make room to appreciate how others might experience things in their way. Being able to empathize is a huge thing and a lot of the bad experiences that we have with people who can't or won't accommodate other world views shows up in horrific ways. Learning to effectively share and communicate your ideas and processes with others is a huge thing and not something to take lightly. It's a key way to better understand what you're doing in your work, bring you closer to other to others and help them understand who you are as a person and artist.
TM
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