DIGITAL DIALOGUES: Art Crit Nights Promote Audience Feedback in a Virtual World By Piper Prolago
In an increasingly virtual world, artists must take every chance to build communities where they are able to share their artworks and learn from each other. With Jarica Walsh and Jennifer Scanlan’s Art Crit Night, creators from across the state—even across the country—are able to come together and do just this. Created to provide artists at every stage of their careers with an opportunity to get feedback on their work, Walsh and Scanlan host this virtual event once a month. Applications are currently open to present at any of the upcoming Art Crit Nights. Scheduled to be held on the second Tuesday of each month, artists and interested community members are invited to join the Art Crit Night Zoom call at 6:30 p.m. to engage in discussions about two scheduled artists’ works. At each Art Crit Night, these two artists each present a PowerPoint of works on which they’d like feedback and open the floor for questions, compliments, and critiques from the audience. While anyone on the call is welcome to speak (or chat) their mind about the artists’ presentations, many artists also request specific kinds of feedback depending on what they hope to gain from participating. Walsh and Scanlan have known each other both professionally and personally for several years. Scanlan started her career as a curator in New York, moving to Oklahoma in 2016 and immediately resonating with the close-knit and supportive community of artists that smaller cities cultivate. As she interacted with artists through her work in Oklahoma, Scanlan noticed that “there weren’t enough curators out there doing studio visits” where they could give the kinds of feedback that seemed to help artists improve their practices. Around the same time that Scanlan moved to Oklahoma, Walsh had started working in artist professional development at the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition (OVAC). Here, Walsh recounts that “I spent a lot of time thinking about how to support artists and what education needs there were.”
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As businesses started closing due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Walsh reached out to Scanlan about organizing a virtual program. “I was thinking about the artists who might’ve been a little bit at a loss, but I was equally thinking…how can I help?” Scanlan recalled. With this, the Art Crit Night program was born. Walsh recounted that the inspiration for the virtual Art Crit Night came from another crit night organized by Art Group OKC that she attended. Impressed with the positivity that their group studio visits cultivated, Walsh wants her Art Crit Nights to similarly be the kind of environment where people would feel comfortable sharing their creations because “it takes a lot of courage to do…it’s such a personal thing.” A practicing artist herself, Walsh compared this welcoming environment to art crit nights that are folded into many masters and even some undergraduate fine arts programs. Here, artists engage in public evaluations with each other. Outside of the university setting, crit nights become less common. While the intensity of the art crit nights may be more intimidating, the opportunity for this kind of organized evaluation of an artist’s work can provide meaningful guidance for artists at any point in their careers. This is what Scanlan and Walsh hoped to achieve in their virtual Art Crit Nights. Always maintaining an atmosphere of positivity, artists can learn a lot about how an audience is receiving their work, the aspects of their pieces that jump out to people, and even think about what might be missing to direct them moving forward. Even in a casual setting, Scanlan emphasized, “you realize what they’re responding to, what is working and why you’re not getting any feedback on other things.” Extending the academic crit night to meet the needs of other participants, Art Crit Nights can be an opportunity for artists to do anything from preparing for a specific fellowship application to getting input on a new direction they’ve more recently explored. This was the case with Emma Difani, a printmaker based in Oklahoma City who
participated in the September Art Crit Night. Hoping to get more perspectives on her more recent work, Difani explained “I’d started a whole new body of work at home during the early months of the pandemic and hadn’t really shown it to anyone.” Presenting at an Art Crit Night allowed Difani to collaborate and exchange ideas like she was used to doing in a printmaking workshop and through her work with Factory Obscura. Through this virtual platform, Difani was able to engage in dialogue with others about her new prints and gain valuable feedback to guide her continued exploration moving forward. While Difani was drawn to these events based on her previous experiences in collaborative settings—both in printmaking workshops and in academic settings— another participant, Jim Weaver, was newer to the experience. “Being a self-taught artist and beginning later in life, there is a lot I haven’t learned about the art world,” Weaver explained, “so a ‘crit’ is something entirely new to me.” Weaver brought his work in tooled leather to the August Art Crit Night and was struck by the audience’s reception of his works, noting “the work doesn’t always communicate its intent,” which is valuable feedback for an artist in making their work. Regardless of their entrance to the art world or mediums of choice, Art Crit Nights have allowed for a continued connection between artists and their public throughout the pandemic. Beyond being a convenient and meaningful opportunity for artists to receive feedback on their work with new restricted access to groups and dangers of in-person meetings, these virtual events provide meaningful tools for artists to succeed in a technologically driven world. Highlighting the importance of artists’ online presence in promoting themselves, Scanlan advises that all artists have websites and learn how to photograph a piece in a way that captures details like its texture or scale. In this way, the virtual format of Art Crit Nights also promotes skills that are imperative for an artist working in the 21st century. When most applications and proposals are not conducted in-person, learning how to most
