Confession...

Last Friday, we critiqued one another's summer art projects in class. I was very content with all of my projects... except for one. To me, it seemed to be the ugly blemish in a collection of otherwise beautiful art. The piece I made over the summer which I hated was this collection of four "free-form" wax sculptures I had mounted on a piece of white laminate shelving. Essentialy, what I did was melt different colors of crayon and dump the hot, melted wax into a large bowl of cold water. Immediately, the wax would harden and create these really organic shapes. At first, I really liked the idea and I liked how they turned out. But, when I thought about it more and more, I started to criticize it. It just seemed too... easy. It seemed too abstract.  I was ahamed of it. I dreaded showing it to my classmates and teacher.

So finally it was my turn to present my projects. I presented the wax sculptures first, hoping that my classmates would forget about it by the time I was done presenting my other pieces. To my utter disbelief, my wax sculptures were the single piece that my classmates were most intrugued by.

The moral of the story: NEVER doubt yourself as an artist. Don't let people's feelings and opinions influence your creative intuition. Everyone has their own, unique, ideas of what art is. When you start trying to closely scrutinize your works of art through other people's eyes, you will end up unsatisfied and dissapointed.