Found my old art school portfolio in a drawer and honestly it's worse than I remember
dug out my art school portfolio today while looking for something else. the one I was so proud of right before I dropped out. it's worse than I remembered and I remembered it being pretty bad.
the kicker is there's one painting in there I'd happily hang in my studio now. and I didn't even like it at the time, it was the one I almost didn't include. so either my taste was backwards or I've just gotten worse at knowing what's good. both probably.
kept the painting, tossed the rest. felt like a small betrayal of my past self but she was wrong about a lot of things.
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this is such a mood. i had a whole box of stuff from my first ceramics course and went through it last year thinking i'd see something cute and nostalgic in it. nope. mostly bad pinch pots and a vase that looked like it was melting before it even went in the kiln. chucked all of it except one little bowl.
but that bowl? i made it in like twenty minutes when i was fed up and just wanted to leave. didn't even sign it. and it's still the piece people ask about at markets. go figure.
i think the taste thing is real though. you get better at knowing what's good in general but you get worse at seeing it in your own work, because you're too close to it. the stuff you made when you weren't trying is the honest stuff. your past self was doing something right even if she didn't know it.
keep the painting, obviously. she'd be happy about that part.
the twenty-minute fed-up bowl being the survivor is honestly the most ceramics thing I've ever heard. there's something about making something when you've stopped trying that just hits different. like the second you stop caring is when your actual taste finally gets a word in.
also the unsung bowl being the market favorite is so on brand. the ones we labor over for weeks are the ones nobody looks at. the universe is a prankster.
glad I'm not alone in the late-night drawer betrayal. we both buried our embarrassing art and it came back to haunt us, except yours is paying rent.