Hating on my own work. or as some people call it, critique

Problems:
biggest issue was the theme. it needed to be tighter. Mine was 'postwar ideas of the good life' but it could have been a lot tighter, or been made a lot easier to understand. Narrowing the theme would have resulted in my producing less sketches, but would have made for a more cohesive final product.
Second issue was the choice of artist. Karl Benjamin was an abstract artist, and focused heavily on forms and colors to make his paintings work, so my initial sketches carried a great deal of abstraction. Good for keeping in the theme, bad for making things identifiable.

How did they go over (and photos are forthcoming, because I'm the only American who doesn't have a camera on their phone)

Emphasis and economy:
It's a close-up of an armchair. I like the way the form carried elements of Benjamin's work. This piece was probably my favorite, but wasn't easily identifiable.

Repetition:
Its a silhouette of stools at a diner juxtaposed in front of a checkered background, representing a diner floor. The idea was solid, but in execution, I should have 1. made the stools more separate and 2. made the checks more even. Still, the checker motif was inspired by a Benjamin work, so I think it did have one good thing going for it, even though it works a lot better in color than in black and white.

Movement:
The idea is people rushing on a sidewalk. In cutting out the piece, I learned a valuable lesson about xacto knives: cut the inside stuff out first, because if its delicate, you will mess up otherwise. The abstracted figures are inspired by a motif Benjamin used in a painting. Were there better ways of representing my theme? yep. Should I have done those instead? Yes. Is there a reason why I did not? I liked the idea.

Balance:
Let us not mince words - this one was crap. Representing 'balance' in the most rudimentary sense, not at all holding to Benjamin's style and poorly executed in craftsmanship, if there is a just God, this piece will spontaneously combust, never to be remembered again. Were I to do this again, I would have found some better way of representing both 'the swimming pool', and 'balance', preferably in a way which held to the style of Benjamin much more clearly.