I thought that the critique for my first project this semester went a lot better than I was expecting it to. The group gave a lot of helpful information and constructive criticism about my piece, which was very good because I knew that I was not happy with my piece overall, but I did not know what I should change about it in order to make the piece better. The class said that they liked the title, and they liked the idea of having maps represent the places in someone's life that are important to them and conveying this by creating a collage of maps. However, they said that since the size of the piece resembled the actual size of a map, they would have liked it to be a smaller size. This surprised me a lot because I specifically made the drawing that big so that it would resemble an actual map and have the person be more life-like because it would be life-sized and therefore it would make it more realistic so that the viewer would be able to relate to her. They also said that the person looked slightly creepy, which I understood and agreed with, but that was a result of not knowing how to work with the material easily since it was my first time using maps to create a self-portrait and it was a very difficult material to work with. They also liked how the eyes were a very prominent part of the picture and draw your attention immediately, but the way that they were done added to the creepiness of the person in the picture. But, overall this critique gave me a lot of good information about how to improve my piece and things that I should do differently if I were to do this piece again.
Your recap of the class discussion was very accurate to what I remember..I really appreciated your ambition to work with collage on that large of a scale. Collage definitely isn't my cup of tea as it is extremely time consuming and I can just never seem to make it look as neat as a want. It seems like you didn't have these troubles as I do, because the individual collaged pieces look quite neat and very intentional. I agree with what the class said about the face. It had a bit of creepiness to it, but I think this was completely based on the cliche image of a smiling face. That being said, I like the idea of the smiling face represented as a posed picture that we all take on our family vacations. Then, I think of it as her smiling out of the places she's been. Although I'm not sure if this was your intention, I would have liked to have seen a little more connection between the face and the maps used. If they were somehow related, I think your collage would have been much more effective even if the visual aesthetic choices were a little problematic.
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