Thanks all. I'm very much at the beginning of learning to turn, so my technical needs are very basic and not remotely innovative! But looking at the work in the gallery here, I'd say there's lots of exciting and challenging work being done by members.
Concerning the fine art perspective - I think my teaching across the years came down to a pretty simple strategy. I tried to understand what the students were interested in and what they were seeking to achieve, and then tried to help them find ways of achieving it. When they produced something, the question became 'to what extent have you achieved what you were after?' and 'how could you improve on that?'. As a middle-aged bloke I couldn't possibly come to each (mostly young) student's work and know what was going on, and for sure I couldn't judge how successful it was til they put it in the context of what they were after and how that related to the work of other artists.
Ha, that's a bit of a ramble, I think it's the first time I've looked back over the years and tried to summarise what I was doing. I guess my point here is that each artist/ craftsperson (whatever) has a sense of what they're after, and is probably the best judge of the extent to which they achieved it. No absolute standards in the art world...
I'll stop this rambling now, and say thanks again for having me on board!
C
