Tags
Artist's Way, Arts, craft, Creative Process, Criticism, Elizabeth Zimmermann, Fiber Arts, knitting, Knitting and Crochet, yarn
Have you ever had someone criticize or “critique” one of your creative works-in-progress, only to have them turn around and compliment the finished product? This kind of approval whiplash can be draining for me as I try to figure out what’s different, or worse, if it causes me to shove a project in the back of a closet because I think the person is right in criticizing it. However, I have a new theory as to why this happens.
The person critiquing my art, whatever their intentions, has no idea what the work-in-progress is going to look like when it’s finished. Heck, sometimes I haven’t even decided yet! So often it looks…unfinished. Off balance. The colors seem a little out of whack, because I haven’t added the third one that will neutralize that rowdy second color.
I may have a perfect vision inside my head of what the finished beautiful project will look like, but I can’t pipe that into the observer’s head. All they may see, for example, is four rows of garter stitch and me thrusting a pattern photo into their hands going, “See! It’s going to be the most beautiful sweater!”
Imagine, for example, showing someone Elizabeth Zimmerman‘s “Baby Surprise Jacket” before it had been finished. The whole point of the pattern is that even the knitter is surprised when this lumpy misshapen piece of material turns into a beautiful sweater (and with only two seams).
The baby surprise jacket I knit out of allegedly superwash wool >:
This is my roundabout way of saying that the next time someone goes, “Um, what is it?” or something similarly unhelpful when you show them what you’re working on, remember that they can’t see the other half of your project still in your soul.