I’m currently reading Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland. The book is about the perils and rewards of artmaking. There is an interesting story in the book regarding quantity vs quality. Check it out below.

The Ceramic teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pounds of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot – albeit (although) a perfect one – to a get an “A”.

Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes – the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose (impressive) theories and a pile of dead clay.

I relate to this story. Before I started writing for Delayed Gratification I wouldn’t write as much out fear of creating a wack song. The authors of the book say’s that art is human; error is human; therefore art is error. Inevitably your work will be flawed. The lesson to be learned is that through trial and error – the more art you create – you learn from those errors and works towards creating better art in the case of the “quantity” group.

What are your thoughts regarding quality vs quantity? Do you focus on the quality or quantity or maybe both? Leave a comment below.