Thursday, February 12, 2009

First Meeting

Ok, since I called this Make Stuff Now, instead of Later..... I think I'm going to just throw this out there and we'll see how it goes. Tuesday March 3rd at 7pm.... 66 Regent Terrace in Milford (My House). I know this isn't perfect for everyone but I really don't want to sit on this and I think it might be fairly accessible to most of us.... Don't feel like you can't show up late either... I think what we're doing will still be relevant even if you miss some of it.

That being said... anyone that plans on coming.... email me at jimaltieri (at) mac (dot) com with 2 words. I'll mix them up and put them in a hat and then send you your first words via email. I know we don't have a full month but I'm sure we can manage to get something together.... plus we can test this whole thing out and see if it works properly or if we need to tweak the process.

A couple of things to keep in mind.

1. Show something.... it's better than nothing.

2. No excuses.... It's not fair to have people critique stuff and then say... well, if I had more time... or I wanted to do this but couldn't. If you wanted to do it.... then do it and show us that instead.

3. We all see something different when we look at art and I don't really want this to be us sitting in a circle telling each other that everything looks great. Critiques should be constructive and we can't say... I like that - or I don't like that... and not have a reason... so if you're critiquing make sure you have reasons to back it up either way.

4. Bring two words with you.

5. Take everything with a grain of salt. Critiques can get opinionated and heated sometimes but I've worked on many things with Bill for example... where we disagreed on things 100%, but then I went back and worked on it some more and it was better in the end. So sometimes... it's not so much the specifics of what someone is saying, rather than the process of you being open to revisiting it and owning up to yourself that it might not be the best you can do.

6. Every month is a new project. 2 new words... A complete new start. I think we'd all love to see previous projects if any of us decide to go back and rework them or ad to them but I think we'll have to save that for the end of the meeting or maybe just casually before we start... but I think the focus should always be the new project. I think that a lot of times too, we get hung up on 'fixing' something and don't move forward. This allows us to move on and incorporate what we've learned into a completely fresh situation.

7. Lets try new things.... I think this can apply to music, sculpture, video, photography, drawing, painting - you name it. So lets not always stick to the same medium. Lots of times, if you're trying to get better at say - painting, doing a sculpture will help you take the next step in painting better... for example.

Ok, enough of that... I think this gives you an idea of where I'm coming from. So let's get to it... Email me your words if you can make it or even if you just want to participate through the blog. I'm sure we'll run into a few snags but we'll work through them once they appear.

4 comments:

  1. Is there any update on this meeting? I sent my two words but I wasn't sure if anyone else has yet.

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  2. I just spoke to Jim. We won't be held accountable for producing anything for this first meeting since it's only a week away, but we'll at least get together and get the ball rolling.

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  3. hey all, Paul and I are most likely getting together tomorrow. I have Paul and Bill's words but if anyone wants to be in for this month's round, send your words to me so that I can put them all in a hat and distribute them to everyone. I can post them here and then whether you can make it to the next meetup or just want to post on the blog, we'll all have what we need.

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