Monday, August 31, 2015

Entry woes


You might think that after somebody has entered 100 shows or so, it wouldn't be such a big deal.  But yet again, it's entry time and I'm struggling.

This time it's for Fiberart International, a very prestigious show that comes around every three years and attracts artists from all over the world.  I was fortunate to be juried into the show once before, in 2010.  The next one, in 2013, unfortunately had the same entry deadline, give or take a week or two, as Quilt National, and the three quilts I had so tediously finished for QN constituted my entire artistic output for the year.  So I had nothing to enter in Fiberart International that year.

So this time I was determined to have an entry, and it is centered around the knots I've been tying for several months.  The entry deadline is midnight tonight. I finished the last piece on Friday and this weekend did the photography -- that shouldn't be too hard when the art is only a few inches tall, should it?  No struggling with big design walls or wrestling huge quilts into position.

But too small can be just as challenging as too large!  My point-and-shoot camera, usually utterly reliable for extreme closeups, refused to focus itself on the knots for detail shots.  Here's what my beautiful sculptures were looking like in the photos: a blur.

Fortunately I have a good friend who saved my life by using his much nicer camera to shoot gorgeous photos this afternoon.

Now the last hurdle: what to call these pieces.  The first ones that I made were called "Specimen", a name I liked because it was indeterminate as to the nature of the things depicted.  Are they animal, vegetable or mineral?  I'm not sure, and the name left it ambiguous.

So the obvious name for the series I'm entering in Fiberart International, in which the knotted bodies are emanating from old wooden spools, would be "Spool Specimens."  Oops.  Too close to disastrous connotations.

I still have several hours to come up with a good name.  I'm thinking, I'm thinking....


10 comments:

  1. first thought for titles
    Knotty Knotts
    Not Knots

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  2. Perhaps Specimen, Series (whatever) -? Good luck anyway.

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  3. Looks like DNA strands. Maybe something to do with the CGAT bases?

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  4. this looks spicy to me , like the shells of those burnt almonds my aunt Hattie loved,.....hope you get it in under the wire.

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  5. If your work gets into FAI what camera will you be using as they want a 600dpi without interpolation! I have a very good camera but it doesn't produce that kind of resolution.

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    Replies
    1. Yes, they said they want 600 dpi but that is a meaningless specification since they don't say how many inches they want to print the image at. (If the image is only going to be 2 inches wide, you only need 1200 pixels)

      They also said at least 3000 pixels on the longest dimension, which is something you can work with. If I use my own camera I can get 4600 pixels wide (but of course they're not in focus); if I use the photos that my friend shot, it's 3650 pixels. So either of them should work.

      If I get in, I will be happy to worry about the photos!!!!!

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