If you’ve ever had to write an artist’s statement you’ll know that the seemingly simple task of explaining your visual work in plain words is actually a tortuous, thankless undertaking. You endlessly write, rewrite, redraft, rephrase, reword and then delete a couple of sentences over and over again in the hope that they will eventually make some kind of sense and won’t embarrass you to even think about.

It’s amazing how hard it is to put your visual work into plain words without resorting to cliché, over sentimentality or just plain “Um I don’t know, I just liked the colour.” You look for help in other artists’ statements, on an agent's website or in old gallery catalogues, but at the end of the day, it’s just you, a pen and a blank piece of paper. You try to express your love of light, for example and your fascination with, say, opacity, but your words sound dull and lifeless. You try to elucidate on the relationship between the parody of the abstract, perhaps, and the repression of the self, but it all rings false and pompous. You tear up the paper. You tear out your hair. You drink another whiskey.

At two o’clock in the morning, you finally give up, and with tears in your eyes, you pick up the pen and write “Ever since I was young I have loved drawing and painting.” And so begins the end of your short artist-statement writing career, because beginning with telling your audience what you liked when you were five just isn’t going to draw them to your work. Neither is telling them that you’re actually an accountant and are ‘just doing this in your spare time’. It’s boring, and let’s face it, a bit sad, so if you’re ever writing an artist’s statement, just don’t do it.

Well anyway, that’s the lecture part over, now on to the review.

I was looking forward to the Patches Market Christmas Edition. I went to the market in the Barrakka Gardens in September; the atmosphere was great and the products for sale were beautiful. This edition was to be held at Valletta’s indoor market – Is-Suq tal-Belt; a great idea on the organisers’ part. No-one’s going to feel like wandering around the Barrakka Gardens on a cold December day, so finding an indoor location that would be free on a Sunday was paramount, even if that did mean an opportunistic butcher opening his shop in the middle of all the artisan stalls.

Over the last few weeks, the Facebook messages have been coming, the excitement’s been building, and everyone was looking forward to the Christmas Edition. I really wanted the market to be good, I wanted to love everything on sale; I wanted to be impressed by the makers’ skill and professionalism.

So I click on the website to have a look and I start reading the makers’ profiles. It doesn’t take long before I see the dreaded “I’ve been interested in sewing since I was young”. Then comes; “I made my first necklace when I was 11 years old, and haven’t stopped making jewellery since.” Then the ambiguous “When I was 53 I had a life changing experience which encouraged me to become very creative.” I don’t want to sound mean, but here’s a word of advice; if you want to be taken seriously as a maker, don’t start your artist’s statement like that.

Because let’s face it, if I’m going to buy something handmade and beautiful, something individually designed, I don’t want to know that its maker keeps herself busy “writing songs, drawing and reading for a Bachelor of Science” for example, or that the person making those cakes “always enjoyed cooking and recently started experimenting with cakes”. I want to think that they’re professional and dedicated, not that they’re just mucking around in the kitchen with a wooden spoon and some double-sided sticky-tape in their spare time. I know Malta’s small and I know it’s hard to make a living on hand-made jewellery alone, but can’t you at least pretend you’re a full-time professional? I want to buy from you and I want to like your product, but reading “I have plenty of time in summer and always try to fill up my time with something useful” is just a turn-off.

The other thing that strikes me as I look at the website is that there are an awful lot more craftspeople taking part since the last event I went to - almost forty in fact. That’s an awful lot of creators and makers. Like I said, Malta’s small – are there forty talented and gifted craftspeople in Malta?

The answer is, no, there aren’t forty talented and gifted craftspeople in Malta, at least not at today’s Patches Market. What there is, though, is a lot of craftsy-type, jar-painting, mud-slinging junk drowning out the few really gifted makers that produce some truly beautiful work. Hidden among the naff ceramic jewellery and woven bracelets are some gems like Chrys Brace’s Mummies Yummies with her homemade soups, jams and paté. Sarah Micallef’s The Secret Rose has some gorgeous fabric pieces and beautiful diaries on show. The Soap Café, as always is doing a roaring trade; I can’t even see what Charlene Mercieca had on her stall, there are so many people gathered around it. Emma Waterhouse has some beautiful, bright papier-maché pieces on display. Nancye Church’s Unearthed, as always, is showcasing some beautiful silver jewellery. I couldn’t find Babettopolis, and eventually forgot to look out for her among all the other stalls. But apart from that, I’m afraid, it was mostly just a collection of hippy-dippy scraps that some people threw together to pass the time.

My advice to the Patches Market organisers? Edit the artists’ statements, sure. But more importantly, edit your list of makers, so that all that the next edition of Patches Market showcases is high-quality, well-designed products by inspired and dedicated crafts-people.

Mona Farrugia, editor of this website, would like to assert that she has not had to edit a single word in Margerita Pule's review of Patches Indoor Market. Now that's a writer (and an editor) for you.