Not so crabby any more

Having gotten seriously crabby on Thursday doing an entry on CaFE, I am compelled in fairness to report that on Friday I did another entry on CaFE and sailed through it in about five minutes.  I am therefore revising my opinion of that system.  Namely, it works well if you are extremely familiar with how it works.  It works even better if you want to submit an image that you have already used for another show.

That's what happened to me yesterday.  I submitted two of the three quilts that I had submitted on Thursday, so there they were, already uploaded and their thumbnails right there for me to click on.  The titles, dimensions and materials had been typed in on Thursday so I didn't have to do it again.  I remembered what happens under each of the tabs in the website, and with only one misstep got through the process with only a few clicks.

It worked because I had spent an hour wrestling with the system the day before, and because I was entering the same pieces.  (That was possible because Thursday's show is an exhibition in print, where you don't have to actually send the work, so double-dipping wasn't going to create conflicts.)

But how long will it take for me to forget the quirks of the process, thus making my next encounter just as painful as it has always been in the past?  I guess if you're a compulsive enterer, responding to many different calls, you could get comfortable.  I still wonder why the system has to be so difficult for the casual or first-time user.

And despite being not so crabby, I can't help but note the strange schedule of this show.  The juror is going to have results announced four days after the entry deadline, which I think is fabulous.  I hate it when shows keep you in suspense for weeks or even months.  But the delivery date is only ten days later -- after which the artworks will sit in a back room for two whole months before the show opens!  (This is clearly a museum with a lot of storage space.)

I wonder why they need the work so far in advance.  If you have a good piece of art that you would like to send out to several juried shows, this is a long time for it to be out of commission while the clock ticks on its shelf life.