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crit: ms priddy's sumi-e tiles

updated sun 31 jan 99

 

Jeffrey Crowe on sat 30 jan 99

Before I begin, I would like to comment on how problematic it may be to
critique someones work over the intenet. We are looking at a
reproduction of the work and making a judgement based on the quality of
the slides and any distortion made in translation to the webpage. It
seemed to me that many of the images were overexposed. It was a bit
difficult to judge the colors on some of the images. Ms Priddy didn't
ask for a critique of her pics so I will leave it at that.

Overall, I found the brushwork lovely. I especially enjoyed the "praying
mantis", "wisteria and a honeybee", and "bees and plums" tiles. I found
the framing device distracting. It appears you have a rectangular tile
painting inset into an irregular "damp rock" format. Is that the
intention? Are you making a reference to a particular Oriental
aesthetic? Against the black background of the webpage, the framing
device looked like it was glazed in a dark blue color. Is that the color
or is it black.? The only tile I found that seemed somewhat suited to
that format was the frog tile. It could have been that the cropping of
the image suits the reference I found as a damp rock. Maybe I am
reacting more to the glaze on the frame. Maybe an unglazed frame would
be better if your claybody was terracotta that fires nice unglazed. Is
this work lowfire or mid-high fire? Are you equally satisfied with the
painted image and what surrounds it? Did you already try a more
traditional framing device? It seems to me that a simpler edge would
strengthen the pieces.

Sincerely. Jeff Crowe