Launching the Imagination – Developing Critical Thinking

    In chapter seven of Launching the Imagination Mary Stewart starts by talking about critiques; how do go about participating in one and how many different kinds there are. Many of the things she said about critiques I have already learned from going through the critiques that we do in class, but what I didn’t know was that there are different kinds of critiques that are supposed to get different outcomes. Stewart listed description, cause and effect, compare and contrast and greatest strength/unrealized potential as all the different kinds of critiques. As she described them, they all seemed to be helpful, not only to the artist getting critiques from others, but also when giving critiques to the artist. The rest of the chapter talks about pushing your project to reach its potential. She listed and described different ways to do that. Through adding and subtracting different elements of the piece, by transformation parts or the whole of a piece, by reorganizing parts or the whole piece, by creating different variations of the piece, and by ultimately accepting responsibility and taking credit for your own piece and your own ideas. I thought it was interesting how she broke each of those down to explain different ways of going about pushing the piece to its potential. I am always thinking to myself, ‘how can I make this piece better?’ but the way Stewart laid the foundation for taking action to do something about it made it a whole lot easier to push my pieces to their potential.