SCA: art and service and recognition

[cellio]

I'd like feedback from SCA folks on this. (Others are welcome to comment if you like, though this may be a bit cryptic.)

There are some activities in the SCA that you can take in a "service" direction or an "art" direction, or sometimes both. Scribal work (calligraphy and illumination) is an obvious area; cooking is another; others exist. Some people thrive on producing six scrolls for this weekend's event or feeding 300 people at a feast or clothing the shire for the upcoming theme event or something to that effect, and they tend to be recognized with service awards. Others are less concerned with throughput and are more interested in doing research and crafting things that are "right" and well-done, and they tend to be recognized with arts awards. Most people, of course, aren't so easily pigeon-holed and are a blend of both approaches. (It's possible to do good work quickly, after all, but it's more of a challenge.)

I find myself wondering, when considering a service-oriented person for an arts award, what the baseline quality standards ought to be. If most of the work a candidate has done is sloppy but most of that work was also done quickly, to meet a deadline, how should I weigh that? If the candidate has produced one or two high-quality pieces (to show that he can), is that enough? Is his decision to work only on the quick-and-dirty work a choice about his art, or an unfortunate effect on his art (for which he shouldn't be judged) due to a choice to serve the larger group? It would be foolish to expect everything a person produces to be top-quality, but how much high-quality work do we expect and is it mitigated by the demands of the service component?

Comments

[sue-n-julia.livejournal.com]

Why is this an either/or proposition? Why can't someone receive the service award for the service they do with their art, but also the art award for the art itself??? If something deserves recognition, recognize it for what it is and don't worry about stuffing the round peg in the square hole.

S

[cellio]

It's not either-or. Indepdendant of the service-award consideration, I'm wondering how much slack it's appropriate to cut for mediocre work because of the demands of the service aspect. Specifically for an arts award, how much high-quality work do we expect to see regardless of the circumstances?

[dr-zrfq.livejournal.com]

To which I say: the circumstances shouldn't affect the amount of high quality work expected. The amount and/or quality needed goes up as the level of the award goes up.

For a given specific arts award X, the answer to the question "How much high-quality work is needed to get X?" is, and always will be, "Your Mileage May Vary." That's just a fact of life in the SCA.

[cellio]

Thanks. I understand the YMMV part; if it didn't, members of an order would always agree. :-)

The discussion that prompted this entry was of the case where the vast majority of someone's work is not up to the evaluator's standards, but this might be mitigated by most of that work being done under sub-standard conditions. I'm trying to figure out whether I should igore that work (evaluating based only on the smaller quantity of "good" work), give it weight because of the circumstances (perhaps requiring less "good" work than I might of another candidate), or count it negatively because of the quality of the work itself.

I've just now realized that there's another factor: visibility. An embroider has the ability to quietly deep-six his bad work so no one else ever knows; an embroiderer working on kingdom favors might not have that option (someone else's materials, in a hurry, whatever). Maybe, in all cases, the answer is to judge a candidate on his best work and expect a certain volume of that, and only count bad work against him if it's really bad (read: doing harm in some way, like someone who's teaching other people bad methods).