Last night I attended the monthly meeting of Front Range Contemporary Quilters (FRCQ), one of the leading textile art organizations in the country.  The speaker, Carol Krueger, was discussing critique groups and went through some specifics about forming a critique group, it's function, and proper critique group etiquette. 

At one point in Carol's presentation she was mentioned that some people use this group as a therapy group.  She also brought up that some groups have an enormous emotional undertone to their group.  I got to thinking about why do some quilt artists manifest these re-enactments of the old quilting bees.  During the presentation the woman sitting next to me asked if men have these difficulties in their critique groups.  My answer without hesitation was NOOOO!!!!  This brings up the next part of the analysis and that is we have to remember that women are relational accounting for how some of these critique groups are run.

I believe the critique group question is one of those things that someone could do an entire doctoral dissertation and probably still not come up with any clear conclusions.  Aside from the gender issue implied above I get lots of e-mails about the fact that certain mediums seem to be prone to "not playing nice in the sandbox".  Fear of competition leads some to think their knowledge is proprietary and the idea of sharing with another person in the same medium leads them to the conclusion that they are defeating their own hope for success.

This is what I believe.  I am a strong proponent of critique groups.  I believe that groups that have artists of different mediums are not only educational but very productive.  The idea of competition is removed from the meeting and that's always productive.  The key question is do you want to become a better artist and if the answer is yes then get the emotion out of the critique.  Remember that with any critique, jurying process or other judgment based decision it's subjective.  Your art won't WOW everyone all the time so know what you need and then go after it.  Scoping out a critique group is part of your professional development quest. 

There is a tendency for quilters or quilt artists or textile artists (your choice of nomenclature) to stay within the safe confines of their own fiber world.  Break out and see the art world beyond your barriers.  There really is an entire art world waiting for your to discover.  You'll be a better artist if you can accept the fact that fiber is not the only medium in the world.  I think it's this issue that keeps many quilt artists from becoming successful artists; they stay stuck in the old gender based, quilting bee mentality when the art world and textile art overall has far surpassed that model.