So much of the impetus for artmaking is motivated by a desire to be better and better, a need to excel. But what about the craft of art, the practice of art as discipline rather than accomplishment? Maybe this kind of art practice can counter “a market-driven society in which people assign value to each other (and themselves) according to socioeconomic status. It also can be a bulwark against the excesses of America’s SAT-calibrated meritocracy. ‘There’s so much emphasis on potential. Not on what people do, but on what they might do. … The judgment of people’s potential is devastating to people who lose out on that judgment. It deprives people of hope.”