Admittedly, it would've been easier to retain photography as the art medium being discussed, but David Bayles (co-author) & I are both photographers ourselves, and at the time we were consciously trying to broaden the range of media being referenced in the text. As retold in 'Art & Fear' it faithfully captures the scene as Jerry told it to me - except I replaced photography with ceramics as the medium being explored. Its real-world origin was as a gambit employed by photographer Jerry Uelsmann to motivate his Beginning Photography students at the University of Florida. 'Yes, the 'ceramics story' in 'Art & Fear' is indeed true, allowing for some literary license in the retelling. Turns out, Orland says that he and Bayles changed the photography story into one about ceramics for their book, per Clear's footnote: Then it continues exactly as the ceramics story goes. On the first day of class, Jerry Uelsmann, a professor at the University of Florida, divided his film photography students into two groups.Įveryone on the left side of the classroom, he explained, would be in the 'quantity' group. Austin Kleon recently noticed another version of this story, featuring photographer Jerry Uelsmann, from James Clear's Atomic Habits. It's a great anecdote but with the absence of specific details (like the teacher's name), it's always struck me as apocryphal - a parable of unknown origin used to illustrate a counterpoint to conventional wisdom.

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 theories and a pile of dead clay. Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. Those being graded on 'quality', however, needed to produce only one pot - albeit a perfect one - to get an 'A'. 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 pound of pots rated an 'A', forty pounds a 'B', and so on. 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. The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. The book Art & Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland contains a passage about whether artists should focus of quantity or quality in their work.

Art & fear by david bayles