The crowds at the 2012 Main Street Fort Worth Arts Festival.
Filling the year's schedule with a slate of shows.
Now, that seems simple enough. Find the best shows and where they're located. Check the calendar to see that I have no other obligations, taking into account the additional travel and setup time required. Fill out the applications and send in the money. Voila! An art show season is in place.
Well…not so fast, Bucky. It's just a bit more complicated than that.
I do, of course, know which shows have a reputation for being the "best". There's actually a "Top 25 Shows" list created each year by a company that purports to collect sales data from artists all over the country. By figuring out the average sales total per artist at each show, they are rated from the top down. While I am dubious of the methodology used to collect the information and the generally very small samplings of artists, that list can be a starting guide. The best information always comes from my fellow artists. We are the ones with the canopies on the ground, so to speak, and can give firsthand accounts of the good, the bad and the ugly of every show. And believe me, every show has all three!
The tricky part of any "Top Shows" list is that what can be great for one artist may well be terrible for another. It really all comes down to the right handful of people walking into any one artist's booth at any given show. People who just have to have your work. Sometimes they come. Sometimes they don't. And, worst of all, it can vary greatly from one year to the next. There's never an assurance that a show will be good or bad so we approach each of them with a very large grain of salt.
Taking into account the shows that have been historically good for me, shows that are rated highly in the "Top Shows" lists and the scoop I can gather from my colleagues in the business, it's time to go about deciding which ones to apply to. Since doing shows all over the country also involves a lot of road travel--hauling the art, canopy, display walls and everything else required for a booth makes flying impossible--it's also necessary to consider circuits that link several shows together, rather than traveling a long distance for one show and then back home again. It's always better to link two or three. Sometimes it just isn't possible, though. For me, doing a string of art shows can be a challenge as my work takes so much time to create. Having and transporting enough work for two or three shows in a row is an iffy prospect. If one of the shows sells far better than I had hoped, there may not be enough left for the other show(s). So, it's a game of juggling a lot of unknowns.
As of this writing, I have applied to (or will) 17 shows for 2013--more than I have ever even considered before. Now, I will not get into them all, depending upon the jury results (more on that later). In fact, so far, of the shows I have applied to whose jury results have been announced, I've been invited to four, put on a wait list (to be called if an invited artist cancels) for two and not invited to one. Results for the rest will trickle in over the next several weeks or months--generally 4-6 months prior to the date of the art show. My record so far is good…knock on wood!
The application process these days has gone high-tech. It is done entirely online. There are a few different systems to which shows can subscribe but they are all basically the same. Artists create an account and upload a library of images of their current work as well as images of their display booth as it looks set up at a show. When an artist applies to a show, they fill out some basic information about their work and select several images to be attached--most often four photos of the work itself and one booth shot. It is required that the images of the art do not show an artist's signature and, likewise, the booth photo cannot show the artist's name. The jurying of the application is a "blind" process and not to be done with knowledge of who the artist is. For this reason, even an artist's past shows and/or awards and honors are not taken into account. The theory is that the jury will select the work based only on it's quality and uniqueness. I call it a "theory" because jurors are often fellow artists and, as a juror, you often know who created the work even without their name showing. That's where the professionalism of the juror comes in. They need to set aside that knowledge and simply judge only the work they're seeing at that moment. There are various and sundry criticisms of this process, but overall, it works pretty well. I have participated as a juror for several major shows and it is a fascinating and daunting task. There are always far too many great artists who just don't get into a given show. It's a big responsibility to know that as a juror, you hold an artist's livelihood in your hands.
Now, that seems simple enough. Find the best shows and where they're located. Check the calendar to see that I have no other obligations, taking into account the additional travel and setup time required. Fill out the applications and send in the money. Voila! An art show season is in place.
Well…not so fast, Bucky. It's just a bit more complicated than that.
I do, of course, know which shows have a reputation for being the "best". There's actually a "Top 25 Shows" list created each year by a company that purports to collect sales data from artists all over the country. By figuring out the average sales total per artist at each show, they are rated from the top down. While I am dubious of the methodology used to collect the information and the generally very small samplings of artists, that list can be a starting guide. The best information always comes from my fellow artists. We are the ones with the canopies on the ground, so to speak, and can give firsthand accounts of the good, the bad and the ugly of every show. And believe me, every show has all three!
The tricky part of any "Top Shows" list is that what can be great for one artist may well be terrible for another. It really all comes down to the right handful of people walking into any one artist's booth at any given show. People who just have to have your work. Sometimes they come. Sometimes they don't. And, worst of all, it can vary greatly from one year to the next. There's never an assurance that a show will be good or bad so we approach each of them with a very large grain of salt.
Taking into account the shows that have been historically good for me, shows that are rated highly in the "Top Shows" lists and the scoop I can gather from my colleagues in the business, it's time to go about deciding which ones to apply to. Since doing shows all over the country also involves a lot of road travel--hauling the art, canopy, display walls and everything else required for a booth makes flying impossible--it's also necessary to consider circuits that link several shows together, rather than traveling a long distance for one show and then back home again. It's always better to link two or three. Sometimes it just isn't possible, though. For me, doing a string of art shows can be a challenge as my work takes so much time to create. Having and transporting enough work for two or three shows in a row is an iffy prospect. If one of the shows sells far better than I had hoped, there may not be enough left for the other show(s). So, it's a game of juggling a lot of unknowns.
As of this writing, I have applied to (or will) 17 shows for 2013--more than I have ever even considered before. Now, I will not get into them all, depending upon the jury results (more on that later). In fact, so far, of the shows I have applied to whose jury results have been announced, I've been invited to four, put on a wait list (to be called if an invited artist cancels) for two and not invited to one. Results for the rest will trickle in over the next several weeks or months--generally 4-6 months prior to the date of the art show. My record so far is good…knock on wood!
The application process these days has gone high-tech. It is done entirely online. There are a few different systems to which shows can subscribe but they are all basically the same. Artists create an account and upload a library of images of their current work as well as images of their display booth as it looks set up at a show. When an artist applies to a show, they fill out some basic information about their work and select several images to be attached--most often four photos of the work itself and one booth shot. It is required that the images of the art do not show an artist's signature and, likewise, the booth photo cannot show the artist's name. The jurying of the application is a "blind" process and not to be done with knowledge of who the artist is. For this reason, even an artist's past shows and/or awards and honors are not taken into account. The theory is that the jury will select the work based only on it's quality and uniqueness. I call it a "theory" because jurors are often fellow artists and, as a juror, you often know who created the work even without their name showing. That's where the professionalism of the juror comes in. They need to set aside that knowledge and simply judge only the work they're seeing at that moment. There are various and sundry criticisms of this process, but overall, it works pretty well. I have participated as a juror for several major shows and it is a fascinating and daunting task. There are always far too many great artists who just don't get into a given show. It's a big responsibility to know that as a juror, you hold an artist's livelihood in your hands.
As an example, this is the group of images I used for my application to the Cherry Creek Arts Festival in Denver. It's always tough to decide which four images of the work to submit, but this group got me into one of the most competitive shows in the country. WHEW!
Once a show has gathered all of the applications received before the deadline they've set, the jurying will take place. It's done in various ways by shows but, essentially, a panel of 3-5 artists, collectors and/or 'experts' will convene to go through every application, scoring each individually as they go. After what's often several rounds of eliminations, the top scorers will be invited to take part in the art show. There will also be a wait list of artists who received high scores but were just below the cutoff for the initial invitations. If anyone declines an invitation to show or they cancel before the event, another artist will be called off the wait list. Pretty much everyone at most shows has to re-jury each year. The exceptions are usually only the previous year's award winners who get an automatic invitation.
The "top" shows receive far more applications than spaces available. A good example is the Cherry Creek Arts Festival in Denver, held each year over the 4th of July weekend. This year, they received something over 2200 applications for about 230 spaces. So, less than one in nine artists who applied got an invitation to Cherry Creek. I was fortunate to be invited for 2013--my third invitation in six applications to the show.
Realizing how many artists apply to those top shows, you begin to understand how even the most carefully planned annual schedule may be thrown for a loop when the odds of getting in can be stacked against you. And that is why I have applied to more shows than ever before. I know I will not get them all and by the time it all shakes out, I hope to have a good, very doable season. So far, so good!
While I wish it was as easy as deciding in January what art shows I will be doing for the rest of the year, I can only make an "ideal" plan and then cross my fingers. The rest is often up to a group of jurors who I will consider brilliant if they choose me or completely ignorant if they don't.
The "top" shows receive far more applications than spaces available. A good example is the Cherry Creek Arts Festival in Denver, held each year over the 4th of July weekend. This year, they received something over 2200 applications for about 230 spaces. So, less than one in nine artists who applied got an invitation to Cherry Creek. I was fortunate to be invited for 2013--my third invitation in six applications to the show.
Realizing how many artists apply to those top shows, you begin to understand how even the most carefully planned annual schedule may be thrown for a loop when the odds of getting in can be stacked against you. And that is why I have applied to more shows than ever before. I know I will not get them all and by the time it all shakes out, I hope to have a good, very doable season. So far, so good!
While I wish it was as easy as deciding in January what art shows I will be doing for the rest of the year, I can only make an "ideal" plan and then cross my fingers. The rest is often up to a group of jurors who I will consider brilliant if they choose me or completely ignorant if they don't.
If I land all of the shows I've applied to (or will) for 2013, this map shows what I have in store for travel... Some 15,200 road miles (in blue) and at least a couple round trip flights (in green) while I park my van with all of my work and display materials between some shows.