Is There Such a Thing as 'Good Enough'?

There's been a big discussion about participating in swaps on arttechniques lately that has a sidebar discourse on what is good enough. Or maybe that's just what I have taken out of the discussion. I feel that I’ve learned a lot by looking at others’ original work. I know that I’ve also received work that displeased me. I feel it is junk. OK, let me be honest. It's crap!

I’ve tried and I just cannot throw it away so I won’t see it anymore, so it won’t bother me. I keep thinking that I should be able to find a way to tell these people what is wrong with it so that they can improve. Someone suggested that a swap hostess should deal with this issue and tell people that their work is not up to standards. First of all, whose standards? What makes it good enough?

Second, did you ever TRY to do this? I have. How do you say “your work isn’t good enough” without sounding like a snob or worse, just plain mean? It is honestly easier to tell someone that they have bad breath or BO!

And thirdly, if someone sent the item in, doesn’t that suggest that they found it of high enough quality to represent them? Would they even get it about quality? I think that the most a swap host can or should do (because, let’s face it, they have enough work to do already!) is to swap the work out as equitably as they can. There is one thing I got in a one on one swap that, if I’d received it for a swap as a hostess, I would have had to turn back somehow because I could not have passed it along. I might have taken the coward’s way and tried to send it back looking unopened when it was too late to resubmit it (oh, if only I knew when to be sneaky about opening packages!) because as I said, how do you say “This is crap” without hurting someone’s feelings? If they got mad at me and decided to never participate in my swaps again, so much the better!

I also received something in a swap recently that was so non work, that I was horribly disappointed. Punching a hole in a piece of plastic and putting a jump ring in the hole is not making a charm! It is simply punching a hole in a piece of plastic and putting a jump ring in it! I'm sorry to say that that person got a charm into which I actually put a lot of thought and effort. The rest of the work in that swap was amazing!

I haven’t let the receipt of poor quality in the past stop me from swapping and I’ve received wonderful work as a result. And yes, I learn from the pieces I receive. Amazingly, two of the best pages in a fatbook I recently received are by people who had never been in a swap before. What made them “best” pages? They are well thought out, well executed, pleasing to the eye. Experience is not what makes you good, though if it doesn’t help, maybe you are not paying attention to what you get back.

I read something recently – in a series of short essays on art by Robert Genn in his twice weekly art letters http://www.painterskeys.com/ - about people feeling that their work was ‘good enough’. The gist of it was that if someone took the time to worry about whether their work was good enough, it generally was. It is those who don’t even question how good their work is who might send in inferior quality work. I think the difference is that if you care whether or not your work is good enough, you will put thought and effort into making it good enough.

I would encourage everyone to try swaps and see how they like the experience. Even if your time is really limited, some of the swaps will still be do-able for you, just choose one where you only need to send in a few items.

And if you get something bad, learn to live with it, deal with, and get past it. I’m learning. But you’ll get back a lot more than you give most of the time.

Here's my latest offering for a swap that I have to mail off tomorrow, a Frida domino.