Perfection and more.....

I found this article in a old book of mind and thought I'd share this with others.

A 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 the 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 scale and weight the works of the "quantity" group: fifty pound 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 a perfect one- to get a "A". Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the work of the highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seemed that while the "quantity" group was busily churning out piles of work- and learning from their mistakes- the "quality" group had theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

Art and Fear....Capra Press 1993