The world is full of questions, and yet the largest struggle for me has been coming up with interesting ones. If I am going to take up people's time, I want to make it worthwhile for them (in addition to getting enough good information for myself). I keep telling myself that more research will lead to more interesting questions, but perhaps I need to take a different approach for now.
Yes, I do very much desire to tailor my questions to each individual artist. However, in the course of Michael's interview with Mark Rabe, I realized that my strong perception is an asset in an interview and I am pretty good at finding questions on the fly which take their cue from statements the interviewee makes in the course of answering other questions.
Questions, Questions, Questions!
It's a balancing act. It's important to prepare thoroughly for an interview, but once you're there with the interviewee, you should feel free to improvise. The prepared questions are available to you in case you get stuck, in case the person you're interviewing has little to say, and to help keep you on track (so you don't walk away having had an interesting conversation but not the information you need to write your artist profile).
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