Taolue Yu

Often I start my students out with playful skills building. They see some new techniques, then I share some examples. These illustrate not just the techniques, but of course they also show creative expressions of particular themes or concepts. With these samples somewhere in the background, I invite my students to play, experiment, use their intuition, and see where the lights lead them. There’s often a prompt, but this can be very loose—not necessarily directing them as much as suggesting openings. Our first rounds of group critique play a key role: Where do we see some magic? What might these pieces suggest to us in terms of meaning? I think it’s important to listen to your work early on. Listen so you can hear what it’s telling you. You can see a direction it’s pointing you toward. After this intuitive process has time to unfold, we get more defined, more specific, more intentional. Even with direction, an adventurous spirit of experimentation is primary. That, and a mind open to recognizing what you see.

Critiques occur about every three weeks. Sometimes it’s a cadence of two weeks. Each critique points to newly illuminated opportunities for further practice, trying out new things, new approaches to materials and/or process, a new inflection on the intended theme. Starting in the spring semester, for almost every critique there is the expectation of seeing a revision piece. Later in the spring, it’s two revision pieces.

Tao is so very individual. He became known and respected for gliding abstractedly across campus like he was riding a cloud. He was not generally talkative in class. But he was always very thoughtful and put a lot of effort into his art making. It was also very clear that he was easygoing about his work in a way. He wasn’t attached to a piece being “good” or not. He experimented and was interested to see what worked. He was easy about receiving criticism and feedback. He looked at all this as ongoing opportunities to learn, to see what could happen. This down-to-earth approach of his was very refreshing. I also learned that sometimes I need to listen more, or to create more opportunities for listening to my students. Sometimes they have a unique path they are on, and they might not feel secure about that. They might not know it’s welcome to go there. For a while Tao wasn’t sharing his art. Later I found out he was working on a project he didn’t think was relevant to our class because of its process. I’m sensitive to this possible situation now. I will do more from now on to frame the unlimitedness of possibility that is open to them.