One of the things that I miss from art school is the critique*.

Yes, the hoary, old institution of the critique. Bring your art or design work into a gathering of your peers and professors or visiting artists, either talk about it a bit or not, then everyone else talks about it and you listen. And listen, and filter, and then possibly ask a question or further explain and listen some more.

Sometimes the critique is right on the money and if you listen you will learn a great deal about your process, your art, that particular piece, and maybe, if you really are willing, you can grow from the experience. Sometimes the critique is a piece of shit, the assembled group is not mentally there or they are feeling off or don't care or at times unwilling to be anything but a bit vicious, and then there can be wounding or anger or ripping your piece to bits in front of them and throwing it at them (particularly effective when the piece is sculptural and has large sticks attached to it, crying while throwing can also add to the effect).

Most of the times, the critique was more than a bit boring or mundane with bits of transformative learning and bits of petty meanness. Lots of sitting, lots of listening to others, and lots of attempting to be present, and if you were letting the listening filter into your brain, then reverberations later that become gentle waves of "oh that is what they meant" awareness. A good lesson for life. Be attentive, listen, some of it may absorb and resound later.

As an adult in a design and art career, I miss the critique. Some clients, if they are artists or designers, can provide good feedback, but the average client either likes it or they don't and many times they don't have the language for why, at worst the client is vague, very vague** or is non-constructive in their criticism.

I have been blessed with friends in a variety of art and design fields who are willing to sit down and not just talk about the big ideas running around but about our work. I dearly miss Megan McMillan and Jessica Spengler, as both women are talented writers / artists and thinkers with excellent observations and insights, and wish that both of them were geographically closer or I had more air miles. In my immediate vicinity, I enjoy in person conversations with painters Dan Callis and Ryan Callis, as well as industrial/product designer Thomas Bertling.

One of my favorite parts of SXSW is sitting down one on one with a friend or a small group of friends and asking if they will give feedback. Last year at SXSW, Veerle and I sat at breakfast one morning and discussed the (then) new design of this site. Veerle was kind, thoughtful, and truthful. I thought over her major critique for a number of months, turning the idea over in my head, weighing it against my own design process and ideals, and ended up not using it. This year, I had the opportunity to sit and show Rob Weychert the in progress re-design of Barflies.net. Rob was thoughtful, asked questions, gave good feedback about design choices, as well as constructive ideas about color contrast. Yesterday, I tried Rob's color contrast suggestion and am now very happy with the new barflies.net color scheme.

* Broader definition of critique at wikipedia.

** Perhaps all business and computer science students should have to take one studio art or design class to learn how to talk in an informed, critical way about the increasing visual world we live in.