The Artist Statement:
A Guide for Thoughtful Writing Objectives:

Students will:

1. Explore high-quality examples of artist statements to identify best practices.
2. Reflect deeply on their creative process, materials, and thematic connections.
3. Draft, share, and refine their artist statements with instructor and peer feedback.
4. Produce a polished artist statement that provides clear insight into their sustained investigation.

Step One: What Is an Artist Statement?
An artist statement is a brief written reflection that:

• Provides context and insight into your work.
• Communicates your creative intentions, process, and materials to an audience.
• Supports the viewer’s understanding of your sustained investigation.
• Uses a clear, reflective, and descriptive tone.

Characteristics of Effective Artist Statements:

• Specific, clear, and concise (approximately 150-300 words).
• Explores personal meaning and how it connects to materials, techniques, and themes.
• Addresses how the work aligns with the artist’s broader body of work or investigation.

Step Two: Analyze Examples Activity:

1. Review examples of strong artist statements provided (e.g., College Board high-scoring portfolios, professional artists, or peers).
2. In your visual journal, note:
   • Common components in the statements (e.g., tone, structure, reflection on process).
   • Unique features that stand out or effectively communicate the artist’s intent.
   • Ideas or phrasing you find compelling or useful for your own writing.

Step Three: Reflection and Brainstorming
In your visual journal, reflect on your work using the following prompts. These will serve as a foundation for your first draft. Write in short phrases or bullet points:

1. Theme and Intentions:
   • What is your work about? (One sentence.)
   • What themes or questions are you exploring?
2. Materials and Process:
   • What materials do you use and why are they important?
   • How do your techniques and processes contribute to your ideas?
3. Context and Inspiration:
   • What inspires your work? (Prior art, personal experiences, cultural influences.)
   • How does your recent work fit into your broader body of work or sustained investigation?
4. Reflection:
   • What emotions or ideas do you aim to evoke in viewers?
   • What challenges or surprises arose during your process?
5. Descriptive Words:
   • Create a word bank of adjectives, verbs, and nouns related to your work (e.g., bold, ephemeral, layered, fluid).

Step Four: Drafting the Artist Statement
Follow this structured format for your first draft. Write in the first person and aim for clarity and specificity.

Paragraph 1: Introduction and Intentions

• Open with a statement about what your work is about or what motivates you as an artist.
• Explain your goals or aspirations for this body of work.
  Example Starter Sentences:
  • "My work explores the relationship between memory and place, using layered materials to reflect personal experiences."
  • "I create to challenge perceptions of identity, focusing on how texture and color can communicate emotion."
  
  

Paragraph 2: Process and Materials

• Describe your creative process. How do you approach making decisions?
• Highlight specific materials and techniques, and explain how they enhance your ideas.
  Example Starter Sentences:
  • "I begin by sketching ideas inspired by old photographs, then layer acrylic paint to mimic the texture of aged surfaces."
  • "I choose charcoal for its immediacy and bold contrast, which allows me to emphasize the interplay of light and shadow."
  
  

Paragraph 3: Context and Connection

• Discuss how your work relates to your life, previous work, or cultural context.
• Reflect on what you are exploring or challenging through this work

​
Example Starter Sentences:

• "This series stems from my fascination with urban decay, inspired by growing up in a city surrounded by abandoned spaces."
• "By blending traditional watercolor techniques with digital overlays, I challenge the boundary between craft and technology."

Closing: Impact on the Viewer

• Conclude by sharing what you hope viewers will experience or understand through your work.
  Example Starter Sentences:
  • "I want my work to evoke a sense of nostalgia and curiosity, inviting viewers to reflect on their own memories."
  • "Through my pieces, I hope to challenge preconceived notions of beauty and provoke a deeper dialogue about identity."

Step Five: Refinement

1. Peer and Instructor Feedback: Share drafts in your Google Doc for comments.
2. Editing: Revise based on feedback, focusing on clarity, tone, and specificity.
3. Final Review: Ensure the statement is concise (150-300 words), free of clichés, and reflective of your unique perspective.

​
Helpful Tips for Students:

• Avoid generic phrases like “I like art” or “I think it looks cool.” Be specific about your intentions.
• Use active verbs to describe your process (e.g., layering, blending, sculpting).
• Don’t try to cover everything—focus on the most compelling aspects of your work.

The Online Portfolio
Design Assessment

Level 4 digital portfolios are deliberately designed to highlight the artist's best work, be navigated intuitively by the users, and bring context to the work and processes used by the artist. These portfolios are designed with images that have been edited with consistency, and are presented in a very clean and simplified digital environment.  

Level 4 portfolios contain the following:

• The artist clearly followed the directions and has separate pages for the portfolio, visual journal, and artist statement.
• The artist created a site that has a clean and simple design quality.
• The artist designed the navigation in a user-friendly and intuitive manner.
• The images were photographed and edited with consistency of exposure, white balance, contrast, saturation, and clarity of focus.
• The portfolio is thoughtfully organized to emphasize the most impressive work.
• All elements on each page of the site were deliberately designed.
• The language of the artist statement is grammatically correct, clear, succinct, and establishes the context of the work and the process by which the work was made.
• The typography is legible, sophisticated, and supportive of the overall character of the work presented.


The Online Portfolio
Design Assessment

Level 3 digital portfolios seem to highlight the artist's best work, are navigated easily by the users, and seem to help bring context to the work and processes used by the artist. These portfolios are designed with images that have been edited mostly with consistency, and are presented in a simplified digital environment.  

Level 3 portfolios contain the following:

• The artist followed the directions and has separate pages for the portfolio, visual journal, and artist statement.
• The artist created a site with simplistic design.
• The artist designed the navigation in a mostly user-friendly and intuitive manner, but has a few inconsistencies in navigation functionality.
• The images were mostly photographed and edited with consistency of exposure, white balance, contrast, saturation, and clarity of focus.  Though the images looks mostly consistent, a scrutinous eye can notice variations in the manner in which the work samples have been photographed and edited.
• The portfolio is mostly organized to emphasize the most impressive work, but there are works of art with lesser quality that get too much attention upon quick navigation through the site.
• Most elements on each page of the site were deliberately designed, but there are noticeable elements of the site that seem clumsy or arbitrary.
• The language of the artist statement is mostly grammatically correct, fairly clear, and gives an understandable context of and process by which the work was made.
• The typography is legible and supportive of  the overall character of the work presented.


The Online Portfolio
Design Assessment

Level 2 digital portfolios are designed with limited ability to highlight the artist's best work, or be navigated intuitively by the users.  These portfolios do not bring a clear context to the work or processes used by the artist. These portfolios are designed with images that have been edited with limited consistency, and are not presented in a clean or simplified digital environment.  

Level 2 portfolios contain the following:

• The artist designed separate pages for the portfolio, visual journal, and artist statement, but these pages have limited content.  
• The artist created a site in which simplicity of design was not paramount.
• The artist has not designed the navigation in a user-friendly and intuitive manner, and has many inconsistencies in navigation functionality.
• The images were not photographed or edited with consistency of exposure, white balance, contrast, saturation, and clarity of focus.
• The portfolio is not organized to emphasize the most impressive work, as there are works of art with lesser quality that get too much attention upon quick navigation through the site.
• Some elements on each page of the site were deliberately designed, but there are many elements of the site that seem clumsy or arbitrary.
• The language of the artist statement is not grammatically correct, and does not give an understandable context of or process by which the work was made.
• The typography is legible but inconsistent in its support of the overall character of the work presented.


The Online Portfolio
Design Assessment

Level 1 digital portfolios are not designed to highlight the artist's best work, or be navigated intuitively by the users.  These portfolios do not bring context to the work or processes used by the artist. These portfolios are designed with images that have been edited without consistency, and are not presented in a clean or simplified digital environment.  

Level 1 portfolios contain the following:

• The artist designed separate pages for the portfolio, visual journal, and artist statement, but these pages have very little content.  
• The artist created a site in which simplicity of design was not paramount.
• The artist has not designed the navigation in a user-friendly and intuitive manner, and has many inconsistencies in navigation functionality.
• The images were not photographed or edited with consistency of exposure, white balance, contrast, saturation, and clarity of focus.
• The portfolio is not organized to emphasize the most impressive work, as there are works of art with lesser quality that get too much attention upon quick navigation through the site.
• Most of the elements on the pages of the site seem arbitrarily designed.
• The language of the artist statement is not grammatically correct, and does not give an understandable context of or process by which the work was made.
• The typography is legible but inconsistent in its support of the overall character of the work presented.

Thinking Big!

I've always wanted my students to be more involved with sculpture and installation, but space, time, and cost of materials have presented a challenge.  For this creative challenge, students will be required to research installation artists, construct a miniature art gallery, create the miniature artwork that will be installed in the gallery they create, and photograph the work in the gallery in a way that convinces the audience that the work is of the scale of an actual full sized gallery. 

This Idea Is not my Invention, but it has always been on my mind as a project for my students.  When I was an art student at VCU, we had a locker (Locker 50B) in one of the art buildings that was transformed into a mini art gallery. It functioned as one of the galleries in the First Friday Art Walk of RVA. They required proposals from interested artists and featured a new artist each month.  They even had openings like regular galleries with drinks, food and music.  

For this project, my Art 4 students will be working in pairs to construct the gallery, curate the contents that will fill it, and create the work for it. 

Here is a list of artists everyone should research and become familiar with before you begin to build your gallery:

Yayoi Kusama
Damien Hirst
Kara Walker
Nam June Paik
Sol LeWitt
Wolfgang Laib
Tara Donovan
Maya Lin

As you begin to plan your gallery design, keep in mind that your gallery can be no larger than 2 feet in any direction.  You are building only 3 walls and a ceiling.  You must have some sort of lighting and you should seek to make this small scale model look as convincingly real as possible.  Dig in and do the research for building miniature environments, and work together as a team with your partner to blow everyone's mind with how realistic your space was designed. 

The work you create to fill your gallery should be made so that it too is convincing of a much larger scale when it is photographed.  Your job is to give us a clear visual of what it would look like if you had the materials and time to fill a large gallery as an installation artist. 

You will need to collaborate with your partner to write an artist statement that goes with the work you installed. You will have exactly one month to design, construct and fill your galleries.   Best of luck to all! 

​Other examples of miniature galleries: 
Stick Your Head In The Gallery

This is an example of a show card by Denzel Boyd in 2013.  He included a QR code that linked directly to his website.  Many students have used QR codes in their exhibitions as a way to create a new level of interactivity.

Here is an example of a web banner by Elisa Rudolph in 2013.  

​Half of your grade for this  project will be based on the design of the visuals that accompany your presentation.  The grade for the design of your presentation will be based on the following:  
(10 points per element)
​
\ LEGIBILITY 
\ ORGANIZATION 
\ QUALITY OF INFORMATION
\ VISUAL ENGAGEMENT
\ CREATIVITY

​The other half of your grade for this project will be based on the delivery of your presentation.  ALL presentations must be at least 7 minutes and no more than 10 minutes.  The grade for your delivery will be based on the following:  
(10 points per element)

\ KNOWLEDGE OF MATERIAL 
\ CLARITY OF SPEECH 
\ EYE CONTACT 
\ ENTHUSIASM 
\ TIME 

​For this Semester Exam, students are required to choose two works of art from the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts to thoroughly research and give a 7 -10 minute verbal presentation that is accompanied by a visual presentation (Google Slides, Prezi, or any other dynamic visual presentation means).  The works of art chosen should be of great interest to the presenter, and should be chosen strategically in an effort to inform the individual artwork of the presenter. Each presentation must address WHY the student chose the works for research and explain HOW the research might impact his or her future work. In the presentation the student is required to Describe, Analyze, and Interpret the works to provide meaningful context for the audience.  The presenter must also give context to the artist who made the work, being sure to include at least one meaningful quote from the artist to help the audience better understand the artist's approach.

The Breakdown:

7-10 minute presentation. (Should be rehearsed)
Explain WHY you chose the work
Explain HOW the research will impact your future work
Describe the work (What are we seeing?)
Analyze the work  (How is it designed?)
Interpret the work (What does it mean?)
Give context to the work and its maker
Provide a meaningful quote from the artist

In all honesty, I don't even think "divergently" is an actual word.  I made it up to describe the type of writing I've been doing in my journal since 2004.  So, for the past 15 years I've been using my journal as a tool for idea development and reflection.  I can attribute all of my best ideas about my work to this tool, and I value it enough to make the process part of your curriculum. 

To ensure that each of you practice this type of writing, I've assigned warm-up tasks that require you to write about various prompts throughout the year.   You will all get better at this as the year progresses, and I truly hope you find the value in this process the way I have for the past 15 years.  Below is a quick example with tips of how I would like to see you writing in your journals. 

Too often, students come to the studio and say they don't have the materials they need for their current project, or that they can only work on the project outside of school.  These "justifications" for not utilizing studio time are no longer going to be accepted in class.  In order to get those students working again, I'm creating this page with various resources for ideas about how to spend studio time creating rather than waiting to create. 

The images on this page came from a site dedicated to more than 50+ Still Life Drawing Ideas​.  It's an excellent resource with high quality examples of upper level art student work.  From this point on, if I notice a student not utilizing studio time, he or she will be directed to this page  to choose an idea and begin working.