At the beginning of this month I was in Louisville, KY taking a couple of classes at the Embroiderers' Guild of America's national seminar. (You might want to take a look at the post called The Mother Ship if you haven't already.) One of the classes I liked very much and the other I did not. The class I liked was the judging class. Every year EGA puts on a judging class at seminar for its judging candidates who need a certain number of classes in the subject in order to certify. Other people, ordinary people can also take those classes, but the judging people get first dibs on a place.
This class was my second choice for the time slot because my first choice went to lottery and I lost out. But in many ways this was an excellent class for me--no homework, lots of class participation, a chance to look closely at the 19th national exhibit and the education exhibit, and some verbal wrangling with my classmates. Why did I take this class? Because as a Master or Graduate Teacher (there are now ten of us within EGA), I have an obligation to continue my education both in and out of my specialties.
Did I learn anything? Well, not anything that I can point to and say, "See, this is brand new in brain." I learned subtleties. I learned more about people than I did about judging, I'm afraid. I have been good, close friends with Carole Rinard for many, many years. I have learned more about judging from her than I am sure most judging candidates will ever know. Does this qualify me for judging. "NO!" I am not a judge and I don't want to be. I have judged a few things on the beginning level in my career and am glad to help out. But I could never do what a Master Judge has to do because I cannot divorce myself from my own prejudices and passions. This was the second judging class I have taken at a national seminar. The first was maybe fifteen years ago right after I was certified myself. It was a greatly different class from this one.
Cathy Trostman led this class. She is a Master Judge herself and is very knowledgeable. But she was not the originator of the class which put her at a slight disadvantage. She took over at the last minute for another Master Judge, Pat Rozendahl. Cathy and I know each other enough to say say hi in passing, but we have never had a conversation. However, we got along pretty well in the class room. We were both on the same page when it came to the 19th National Exhibition.
The class was made of of sixteen women from all over the US. There were two certified teachers there, myself and another woman at my table who was the newest EGA certified teacher. There were around four, as I recall, judging candidates. The rest of the people were either looking at the class to see if they would want to go through the judging program or were looking for ways to improve their own embroideries so they could win more ribbons.
It is the people that were there to win more ribbons that interested me the most. It is fairly cunning to take a judging class in order to get in the minds of the judges. But this was not the sort of class that could be much help for that. There really is no magic formula that judges know and therefore other people can know. As Carole Rinard says (over and over), it is a certain judge on a certain day and how she is instructed and how she feels. As to winning more ribbons, well good luck there. Ask me how to get to Carnegie Hall
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