Quality

January 23rd 2007, sees my wife begin school at the Culinary Institute of America. For those who don't know, this is THE BEST culinary school in the nation and probably the world. Robin is an amazing person and I'm extremely excited that he got in. She's in for a tough time, but I know in the end she's going to be one hell of a cook. Not that she isn't already.

In preparation for school, Robin has me doing some reading. It's a book about the culinary institute written by a writer who experienced the school first hand. I just finished the book today and it has me thinking about something. The expectation at the culinary institute is perfection. It shouldn't expect less.

What this did is make me think about my practice as an artist. I don't think that I have ever expected perfection out of my work. Not that I've been lazy with it either. I have always pushed it, mostly way beyond my ability as a craftsman. I've always put my head down and created. Criticism is always a part of this process, but it's never driven me to being perfect. My response to this is that what in the art world is perfect. You can cook a steak and know its burnt, but when is art burnt. When I think about my stuff, it usually underdone. This idea of when the craft and the concept fit together has been a big question for me over the last few years. Though, I don't think that I was ever told to perfect. I was told it needed to be refined. But I never saw anyone doing perfect work. A flaw was always there in some way. I would say that it is easy to find flaws if you look hard enough.

I guess that I always focused on the idea. How good was the idea? I think my ideas are good and getting better. Now it's a matter of getting the rest of it to support the idea.