“Artists shouldn’t enter the arena of competitions until they are tough enough to realize it is only opinion and not a reflection on their worth.” (Mary Moquin)
So… I got a rejection letter. None of the pieces I submitted were accepted, although I’ve been in that particular exhibit twice in years past ( most recently about three years ago).
The above is one I submitted. Problem is with form letters, you never know what it was that made them reject it. I’ll only be able to speculate when I go to the exhibit.
I’ve noted before that they seem partial to some 3-D element for the prize winners, but I haven’t tried that yet. There are a lot of ways that could be done with my work, but without my work by nature being 3-D, I suspect it would look contrived. I also get frustrated when I get too far away from the actual drawing (like those pendants, where the glass cutting and soldering is time-consuming). Cutting paper, layering paper, rotating layers of paper, mirror-edges around the design–all of them sound cool but don’t really sound fun to put together. I’m really not a paper-crafter.
I have a couple of other ideas about how I can give them more depth, so I suppose I’ll concentrate on that first.
I have a couple of little peeves about these exhibits. The first is the application fee (in this case, $25, which isn’t too unreasonable). The second is that photography and other kinds of art work are usually grouped together, and I think photography exhibits/competitions should be held separately from other media. I think photography is an entirely different beast, especially now that good cameras are affordable and it’s so easy to use the computer in conjunction with that. I love it, but just because it hangs on the wall doesn’t make it the same thing.
Evaluating my work is a constant process, always there in the background, but it’s good to put it up front sometimes. Right now the difficulty of getting exposure to promote sales makes it a challenge in ways that don’t have anything to do with the difficulty of doing the work. I hope I’ll be able to draw some honest conclusions later on. Maybe that will include submitting some photographs next time.
There’s one nice little conclusion to this form-letter rejection, though. I was shelf-reading at work last night (shelf-reading is checking the shelves to make sure that every book is placed in exact order). I always keep an eye out for bookmarks since I have quite a collection. Usually I find check-out receipts and boarding passes. This time, in a book called “The Lord is my Shepherd”, I found $26.00. Just enough to cover the application fee and postage to send the cd. Is that cool, or what?
Jeanne
Like this:
Like Loading...
Crater Lake was a new discovery for me this trip. I took hundreds of pictures there. Heck, have one more:
That’s Wizard Island, the secondary cone. Crater Lake is about six miles across and 2,000 feet deep.
Mt. Rainier the first evening at sunset.
Clear weather is not always a given at the mountain, which makes its own weather!
I love bracket fungus and the dew drops caught my attention.
This lake can be seen by the road if you travel towards Sunrise (east) at Mt. Rainier. I’ll put pictures up of the view at Sunrise some other time.
This great view of Myrtle Falls is only a 7 minute walk from the parking lot at Paradise. 
Narada Falls is too big to fit into any camera view, so I just put it in the background for this shot.
So Far From Heaven 