Studio Sounding Board Questions

The following questions can help you get comfortable talking about your work, identify what’s important to you, discover questions you hope to address in critique, or brainstorm for an artist statement. You can freewrite in response to each question or pair up with a partner and take turns asking each other the questions for 15 min. each or so. The listener can ask follow up questions and take notes for the speaker, and you can reflect together on what was most telling, compelling, or surprising. (This is a brainstorming exercise; no need to be comprehensive in the end—focus on selective highlights.)

• What does your project/piece look like? Describe its key formal features. 

• What materials are you using and what qualities do they possess?

• What process or technique did you use to make it?

• What was your inspiration for this project/piece?

• What is its context (historical, political, environmental, art-historical, etc.)?

• What concept(s) or subject(s) are you exploring?

• How have you transformed your concept(s) or subject(s)?

• What meaning/significance does your project suggest? 

• How does the viewer/user experience it?