Writing a Project Statement

Make a MIND MAP

URL link from Paper Monument: Issue 4

Toward a History (and Future) of the Statement authored by the Artist 
 by Jennifer Liese

> Check out previous BLURB publications in the campus library and in my office - statements are through out them.

Here are a few suggestions.... 

1. Be honest with yourself. 
Before you write a word, take some time to just think about you and your creative work. 
You need to understand what it is that you are trying to achieve, before you attempt to explain it to anyone else.

• Ask yourself what you're doing in this recent body of work. What does your art express? What makes your creative work unique?
• Ask yourself why you're doing it. What emotions or ideas are you trying to convey? 
• Ask yourself how you're doing it. What do you draw inspiration from? What tools and materials do you use?
• Unusual application, etc.???

2. Make a mind-map. 
Mind-mapping is a good way to free your thinking. It will also help you to trace relationships between different ideas.

• Jot down a key idea that informs your work in the center of a blank page. Then spend 15 minutes writing down any words, phrases, feelings, techniques etc. related to that idea.
• Free writing is another technique that can help get the creative juices going. Spend 5-10 minutes writing whatever comes into your head when you think about your creative engagement. 

3. Consider your influences. 
Think about the things that influence you, whether its art, music, literature, history, politics the environment, and more. Think about how these influences have made an impression on you and how they manifest themselves in your current work. Be as specific as possible.

4. Determine what you want people to understand. 
Think about what you want people to take away from your art. What message or emotion are you trying to convey?

5.  Provide some insight into your current work. 
What life experiences has informed your work? 
What are you exploring, attempting or challenging through the creative work? 

6. Describe your decision-making techniques. 

Tell the reader about your decision-making process. 

How do you select a theme? 

How do you choose what materials to use (if unusual)? 

What techniques to utilize? 

Keep it simple and tell the truth.

7. Make a statement about why you do what you do. 

Try to make it as personal as possible. Talk about what your goals are and what you hope to achieve through your art.

8. Keep it short, sweet, and to the point. Your statement is an introduction to your work, not an in-depth analysis of it, nor your over arching artist statement subject matter that is more general.  Your statement should be one to two paragraphs and no longer than a page.  150 words maximum

** Your statement should answer the most commonly asked questions about your current work and not overwhelm readers with irrelevant facts and minute details.

** Brevity and efficiency of language are key. A good statement will leave your readers wanting more.

RE: Four Ways to write a project statement


Ask yourself:
What are the ideas you are concentrating on in this particular body of work?
What are some things that influence / impact you?
How do I make my ideas visible?
Highlight a piece and draw specifics from it
What materials do you use and why? Application? Scale? etc.


A few examples:

Spencer Tunick: "Everything She Says Means Everything"
http://spencertunickcleveland.com/project-synopsis/

I create weavings, videos and installations. In each project, I am proposing potential connections amongst material, history and place. The notion of landscape is a continuous thread that runs throughout my practice, specifically looking at how landscape — as scene or a space — exists by definition as a view or representation.
        
How can we interact with a space that can never be reached physically? I employ the act of weaving to recreate a view that may only be referenced through the mediation of time, memory and technology. Through the process of reinterpretation, information is lost, while previously unknown knowledge emerges, offering a new experience in the created object.    -- Erika Lynn Hanson

The raw immediacy and lived experience of taking a photograph matters as much to me as how I compose the frame. It is my private personal connection to these places and the emotional or intellectual intrigue that grips me through the process that I hope resonates in the print. I seek to capture the mood and promise, silence and solitude in that extended moment of awareness. In my earlier architectural practice and now my photography career, I'm fascinated by the opportunity to invest symbols and narrative into built form or see the metaphor in a material space. I have an abiding interest in thresholds and liminality - places that seem somehow a bridge between the concrete and the ephemeral, elevated above time, hallowed. The sublime resides even in an ordinary space. And while the wondrous capabilities of the digital process permits an extraordinary level of clarity, detail and sensuality to be ingrained into an image, I like to think that there is a mystery at the heart of all my photographs, an appeal for the viewer to keep looking and see more.
--- David Burdeny

The artist chooses what to make and chooses to make art rather than to make a text, for example, or sometimes chooses to make a text but to make it differently than if they were to make it as a philosophical text. But having made that choice it doesn’t mean that they . . . are incapable of choosing the alternative. 

                    – Robert Storr, art critic

I said before that I wish I’d never said anything about “The Pharmaceutical Paintings” and I still wish I hadn’t. They are what they are, perfectly dumb paintings which feel absolutely right.        – Damien Hirst, visual artist, YBA

I am making an Enlightenment Capsule for the audience to meditate inside — virtual reality in which people can experience ancient ideas from the East . . . . But I'm not interested in using ancient things; rather I want to connect [audiences] with contemporary life through the technology we have now.         

- Mariko Mori, photographer / performance artist