Not crabby at all this week

I was crabby last week trying to do entries where the system seemed eager to block me at every turn.  But I'm happy to report that one of the shows has already done its jurying -- perhaps the fastest jurying in modern history -- and one of my flags has gotten in.

Fading, 2016, 59 x 99"

The show is the 45th Mid-States Craft Exhibition at the Evansville Museum in Evansville IN.  I'm always thrilled to have fiber art accepted into an all-medium show, although this one, being a "craft" show, is more accurately described as almost-all-mediums -- ceramics, metal, textiles, wood, enamel, glass and mixed media, but not painting.

I've been in this show once before and was sadly prevented from attending the opening festivities because I was awaiting emergency surgery the next morning.  I've not even been inside the museum, despite having both dropped off and picked up my quilt for that show, because the place was under renovation and I arrived at an off hour and I think some other obstacle as well.

I'm hoping for better luck this time around!

My big question now is whether the museum will let me display the quilt the way I did at Pyro Gallery earlier this year, simply nailed to the wall, or whether I'll have to add a sleeve and supply a rod.  I loved it nailed to the wall -- so flat, so smooth -- but we'll see whether the museum staff is up for the challenge.

The show opens December 10.

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.

How to get crabby on a beautiful sunny day...

... if you weren't crabby already, just do a show entry using CaFE.

You are asked to submit images "1200 pixels or larger on longest side," and then the call goes on to say "Please note that uploaded images are scaled by the system and two monitor versions are created: a small 100-pixel thumbnail and a large 700-pixel image.  These images are available for you to preview in your portfolio after you upload."

What image do you suppose the jurors will see?  If they're going to see 700 pixels, why don't they just tell us to upload a 700-pixel image?  If they're going to see 1200+ pixels, why tell us about the 700-pixel image?  Why do I need to know this?

They tell you to submit "A brief artist statement (50-100 words, maximum)."  Does this mean somewhere between 50 and 100 words, or does it mean 100 words maximum?  Scratch your head all you want to (is my 45-word statement going to be disqualified for being too short?) but never mind, because when you get to the place to type in the statement, it now says "1000 characters maximum."

I got to the website by clicking a link in a message from Surface Design Association, which is sponsoring this Exhibition in Print (no actual show, just a catalog).  After that, I clicked my way into the CaFE website and started filling out the application.  Despite confusing directions, I managed to upload my images.  I was not distracted by ominous remarks like "If Modify or Remove options are not available, click to archive past entries, then return here to modify or remove media."  or "If you need to add artwork samples, save first before returning to MY PORTFOLIO.  You may come back to your saved application from MY CAFE ENTRIES to complete or review the application prior to checkout."

Now it's time to attach the images to the entry form.  I had misread the ominous remark about coming back to my saved application, and mistakenly went to the page where you would select what call you are responding to.  The form told me to select the organization sponsoring the call.  I typed in Surface Design Association and it said "showing 0 events."  I typed in Exhibition in Print and it came up with a show in New Mexico sponsored by somebody else.  Hmmm.  I started clicking around on all the many tabs on the website and eventually came back to the page I started from, which indeed had the right show listed.  Sigh of relief.

I had uploaded three full images and three detail shots.  But the system told me to attach two or three images to my entry.  Hmmm.  I went back and read the call and sure enough, it had said "up to 3 images total may be submitted; artists are encouraged to submit at least 2 pieces and no more than 1 detail.  Submission of a detail is not required."  So I uploaded just the three full images.

Why do you suppose the system is set up to discourage detail shots?  I've rarely encountered fiber art shows that didn't want details -- as in any materials-based art, how it's made is always a big viewer magnet.  I've made art where the full view is almost meaningless without a detail shot, so if I want to enter such a piece, and have to submit the detail, then in effect I can only enter two pieces instead of three.  What's that supposed to accomplish?  Do you think this was a deliberate decision made by SDA, or an unintended consequence of the program?

this image doesn't do much for me....

until you add the detail shot

The only other show I've entered recently was a relatively small regional show, and the entry process couldn't have been easier: send an email with your images, put your info and list of the pieces you're submitting into the body of the email, call them the next morning and tell them your credit card number.  I know you can't reasonably offer this kind of service if you expect hundreds of entries (or can you??) but all the bureaucratic complexity of the automated programs has to be a turn-off to potential entrants.  It wouldn't be so bad if the directions weren't apparently written by the same people who write user manuals; maybe geeks can follow along, but those of us who just speak English have serious problems.

That's why I'm crabby today.  But if you're willing to put up with the hassles, you can still enter SDA's Exhibition in Print until midnight tonight.  Click here to get to the call; after that you're on your own.

Pixels and show entries

I had a back-and-forth the other day with somebody who was trying to get images onto a website, trying to clear up some confusion about how high the resolution needed to be.  After that question was settled, she wrote me back and talked about her frustration with trying to enter a juried show through CaFE.

"CaFE requires a pretty small file to be uploaded.  I don't remember the exact size, but I know that I was disappointed with how the photo looked when I tried to zoom in.  Of course, they also allow a detail shot.  Is this how things normally work when entering photos of artwork to be judged?  Why can't I send my 2 to 4 MB awesome photo for clarity and detail at the thread level?  Could you answer this or write a blog?"

OK, I'll take a shot!  The disclaimer: I'm not a computer geek, so those who are may correct me on the details.  But I know I'm right on the overall concept.

First off, some definitions.  Resolution is a technical term that way predates the invention of digital images; it stems from the printing industry, where photographs were translated into tiny dots of ink instead of the continuous tone of the original photo paper.  Much like pixels in a computer.  The more dots or pixels, the crisper and clearer the image.

If you have a certain number of dot/pixels in your image, it may or may not be enough to give you good resolution -- that is, a nice crisp, clear image.  Here's a photo of adorable baby Vivian, sized to a relatively stingy 100 pixels across.  If we display/print it as a tiny thumbnail, it looks OK.

100 pixels wide

But if we stretch it out to huge, we lose the definition.

100 pixels wide

Printers would deal with this issue by talking about dots per inch.  Tiny Vivian's 100 pixels are spread over a bit more than an inch, yielding 80 dpi, while large Vivian's pixels have to go farther, only 17 per inch.

So dpi is not an absolute term; it's totally relative to the size at which you display or print the image.

Why then do a lot of show sponsors specify that an image needs to be so many dpi?  Because they don't really know what they're talking about. Point 1 about misunderstanding: don't think about dpi when you're preparing your images for submission or posting.  Think about pixels.

OK -- how many pixels are we talking about?  Your point-and-shoot digital camera probably produces images 3000 to 4000 pixels wide.  A cellphone camera might give you 4600 pixels.

So why don't we just submit those big, data-rich images to the show and let the jurors zoom in for close views as they wish?  Two reasons: one technical, one human.

First, because too much data takes longer to transmit (from you to the site, or from the site to the jurors) and bogs down the server. And if you're looking at an image on a computer screen, you probably can't tell the difference between a 4000-pixel photo and an 800-pixel photo, so why even collect all that extra data?  (Maybe your computer will let you zoom your view of the two photos below and see how big you have to go before the lower one gets a whole lot nicer than the upper one; I had to go to 250% before the 800-pixel image started to break apart.)

800 pixels wide

3024 pixels wide

Second, because jurors don't want to take the time to zoom in here and there and everywhere searching for something or other, and because they don't want the responsibility of choosing which part to zoom in on -- they want the artist to choose the detail that is most telling.

Side note:  as a longtime juror, I can testify that your choice of detail shot is extremely important in making your submission attractive.  We can talk more about that in another post if anybody is interested.

Sometimes show rules will specify two or three different measurements.  There's almost always a pixel rule:  the image must be 1800 pixels on its longest side, or it must be at least 1200 pixels, or it can be no more than 1800 pixels.   That's the rule I look at, and the rule by which I resize my photos.  I always submit the most pixels I can, on general principles, just in case the image is going to be projected on a big screen for jurors to look at.

Sometimes there will be an additional rule about the image size in MB.  But here's point 2 about misunderstanding: the size of your photo in MB has nothing to do with the resolution.  It is simply a measure of how much data is stuffed into the package.  For instance, if you have futzed with an image in Photoshop, perhaps to remove a stray thread in your detail shot or lose a distracting bit of the background wall, it may end up with more data than it started out with.  The only reason show sponsors would need to specify a maximum size in MB has to do with their system: too much data takes up too much space and time.  But my suspicion is that it's much like the dpi rule, sponsors who don't know what they're talking about, and specifying the size in pixels would accomplish almost exactly the same thing.

But if you see a MB rule, check the size of your image.  If it's too big, you can either resize the image to include fewer pixels, or if your photo editing program allows it, you can choose a lower degree of resolution.  Photoshop Elements, for instance, allows you to save a 3024 x 4032 image at 100 quality (4 MB) or at 75 quality (2.36 MB) or at 60 quality (1.82 MB), or any other number you type in.  Again, if I have to lose bytes, I'll work downward, trying different settings, until I'm just barely below the rule.

And finally, sometimes there will be an additional rule about the image size in dpi.  If they have already specified a pixel rule, just ignore anything they have to say about dpi.  Remember, pixels are absolute; dpi is totally dependent on the use to which the image is put.  People who ask for both don't know what they're talking about.  At best, such a rule is redundant; at worst it's confusing and contradictory.

I hope this explanation helps.  Ask more questions if you want and I'll do my best to answer them!

Bad ideas in art

I saw an extraordinary call for entries last week, for an exhibit entitled "Demographically Speaking." According to the call, the exhibit "will reflect the vibrance of its community through the inclusion of works that speak to a diverse audience."  It goes on to say the show "will also address the inequities found within gallery and museum exhibitions posing the question, 'whose stories are being told in the art world?'"

(I gather that's artspeak for no straight WASPs need apply, especially men.)

I certainly agree with the concept of expanding the pool of artists beyond the usual suspects, with the idea that many groups have not "had their stories told" in contemporary art, and that shows with different demographic groups of artists may appeal to a broader swath of the potential viewing public.  But I was take aback by what came after the artspeak.

Each artist entering the show has to complete a questionnaire that asks "How do you identify yourself or the subjects in the work you are submitting?"  In a series of multiple choice questions, it asks you to describe your age, gender identity, sexual orientation, race/ethnicity, religious affiliation, education level, and disabilities.

I guess I've led a sheltered life, because I was surprised to find five possible choices for both gender identity and sexual orientation (although in each case, one choice was "Other:_____).  I confess, I don't know the difference between pansexual and polysexual (but that's OK, they're part of the same choice).  Nor do I appreciate the subtle differences between cognitive disabilities ("developed after birth, from neurodegenerative diseases or acquired brain injuries for example") and developmental disabilities ("such as, but not limited to, Down Syndrome, Cerebral Palsy, Intellectual disabilities, or Fragile X Syndrome").  If you're blind or deaf, is that a "physical" disability or a "sensory" disability?

Then, if you haven't already revealed enough about yourself, it says "Any other important identifiers you feel represents you or your work that should be considered not already listed above (social, physical, economic, etc.)?  Please share:__________"

Questionable grammar aside, I am horrified by these questions.  In most walks of life it's illegal to ask people about their disabilities, let alone their religion and sexual preferences.  The prospectus is coy about this; after stating on page one that the questionnaire is required, it later says "Completion of this survey is voluntary" and then asks if they can please put your demographic details on the art labels; if you say no, they won't.

I'm all for more diversity in museums, but can't that be accomplished without such heavy-handed interrogation?  Can't a curator or juror detect when an artwork is "telling a story" from a different perspective without the artist yelling "hey, I'm polysexual!!"  If seeking out diversity among artists is supposed to get new audiences into the museum, will demographic info be the most important part of the press releases and exhibit postcards?  "Come see our show; 12 percent of the artists are Latino, 4 percent are polysexual, 8 percent are transgender/genderqueer, 2 percent are Hindu, 5 percent have mental illness or psychiatric disorders."

Do you want to rush out and see that show?  Maybe, but I'm sure not going to rush out and enter it.

Because it feels so good when I stop...

It's Quilt National entry time again.  Already I've had four friends call or email for advice and/or commiseration -- not about their quilts but about the entry.  So I planned my afternoon around the process.  I am no newcomer to online entries so I do the regular preparation.  I get all the images properly sized and named and in a separate folder on my computer.  I find the list of things the system is going to ask for and type them out in a Word document so I can copy instead of type into the actual form.  I get my credit card.  This should not be such a big deal.

Well, I'll spare you most of the gory details and just give the highlights.  I realize that I've written pretty much the same damn rant twice before, after entering QN '13 and QN '15.  The same dumb features of the entry form, the same dumb password woes (yes, Virginia, you should start entering before lunch, because you know for sure that you have forgotten the password you gave two years ago and will have to wait for them to send you a new one which takes about a meal's worth of time to show up).  The same dumb system where you do entry #1, proceed through credit card checkout, and then return to do entries #2 and #3.

They have fixed a couple of things.  Now you don't have to type in the info like "Have you exhibited in any previous Quilt National?" three times; you can click here and everything you typed in for the first entry will be copied into the new form.  You still do have to type in the materials and techniques twice for each quilt, once on the full view page and once on the detail page.  And they still ask you for the month of completion, which I suspect 75% of people will make up rather than try to reconstruct from their work logs.

Something new: "Brief History of Exhibition and Publication.  Please indicate any public exposure for your work as an artist.  This includes shows and exhibitions as well as publications."  I think they allowed 500 characters in the little box, so yes, they do mean brief.  What are you supposed to put there?  I was passive/aggressively brief, told them a couple of big shows and then said "numerous shows and publications."  I wonder what they are going to do with this info.

don't you love it when the death icon shows up with no clue as to why the system is unhappy?  it only took me three or four minutes to figure out what it wanted

I had two klong moments, one where things came out right by accident, one where they didn't but I hope it won't be fatal.  First the good news: I didn't realize until after I had hit the submit button for entry #1 that they had never asked for my name on the entry form!  Of course they did on the credit card page, but there they wanted the name on the credit card.  As it turns out, the name on my credit card is the name I want my work exhibited under, but I bet that isn't the case for many people.  I'm sure you could get this kind of thing straightened out eventually before the catalog gets published, but why don't they ask for your name to begin with?

Now the (maybe) bad news: You upload your image, which is pre-named something like "fading_59-x-99_full" and when you come to the page where you're supposed to fill in info about the quilt, the name of the image pops up automatically in the "Title" box.  I stupidly went on to the second box and proceeded down the page, without erasing "fading_59-x-99_full" and typing in "Fading".  I realized my error only after I had submitted entry #1 and proceeded to #2, at which point it was too late to go back and fix #1.

Yes, I was stupid.  But yes, the entry system was stupid too -- why did it choose to autofill that box, knowing it was going to come up wrong, instead of just leaving it blank for me to fill in correctly?  I hope that if this quilt gets into the show somebody will notice that "fading_59-x-99_full" isn't your typical quilt title, and call me up for clarification, but again, why not set up a process that avoids such problems?

I'm not the dullest needle in the pincushion, and if I have so many frustrations I bet a lot of other people do too.  I say it every time, and I'll say it again -- why don't show organizers have somebody sit down and pretend to fill out the entry form before they open for business?  And then why don't they fix some of these glitches and stupidities?  Wouldn't it be nice if your customers would be able to write blog posts about how easily they did their online entry?

Good news!

So the good news is that my quilt has been accepted into the Marie Webster show at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, June 24 to September 4, sponsored by SAQA.  The juror was Niloo Paydar, the museum's curator of textile arts and fashion design.

You may remember when I talked about this show earlier that Marie Webster was an Indiana designer who built a nice business selling patterns and kits for appliqued quilts in the early part of the last century.  Although that style and genre of quilts has never particularly appealed to me, I was challenged to find something in her work that I could translate into this century and explore on my own agenda of interesting concepts.

The quilt I chose as inspiration was this white-and-pale-blue number with a design of little kids looking at the moon and stars.

Marie Webster, Bedtime

I simplified the design to fit the much smaller size requirements of the show (my quilt is just 27 x 21") but pretty much replicated the two figures from the original.

I made this piece by heavily machine stitching the blue areas onto off-white canvas, leaving the unstitched fabric to bulge and ruffle. Then to make it fit the official SAQA definition of a quilt, which wants layers, I added a back and quilted that down with additional blue stitches.

Here's what mine looks like:

Zoe and Isaac Stargazing 


















And here's my artist statement:

In Webster's time a proper quilt was neat, attractive, symmetrical, perfectly executed to show off the maker's needle skills. Not her design skills, because the quilter would purchase the pattern, or perhaps a kit, from somebody like Webster, and follow the directions.  In the intervening century, many quiltmakers have chosen to become their own designers.  Quilts have come off the bed and onto the wall as works of art, not just functional decor.  A proper quilt can have non-straight edges, non-right-angled corners, non-flat topography and raggedy edges.

So much has changed, but there's still room in contemporary quilting to depict the wonder of children contemplating the moon and stars.  My riff on Marie Webster's "Bedtime" changes all the techniques but keeps the images.

Me vs. the system -- who won??

I am one pissed-off artist as I write this post.  I just spent a half hour attempting to enter a juried show using the CaFE system, which I have used before but will never use again if I can help it.

CaFE is one of those "helpful" systems that wants to make life oh so easy for you but ends up making it nearly impossible to accomplish what you want to do.  Like autocorrect and autofill, which so frequently refuse to accept the word you type in and substitute something else, CaFE thinks it knows what you want to do, and damn if it will let you override its plan.

Theoretically the helpful system should have been a breeze, because I was going to enter the same things that I had put in a previous show.  There they were in "My Portfolio" and when I checked the two images, they popped themselves up into place.  Or I guess they did -- I had been asked some questions about "Entry 1" and "Entry 2," but I could never figure out which of the two pieces got dubbed 1 and which got dubbed 2.

After I had entered the previous show I had second thoughts about the price I had put on the works, and now decided I'd better go back and see if I wanted to revise the number.  But CaFE wouldn't let me go to that part of the system -- even to see it, let alone edit it.  I spent ten minutes clicking from one link to another trying to access where I had previously entered info about the pieces, but without success.  The only thing I could see when I clicked "review your entry" was one photo of each piece -- no dimensions, no price, no date of completion.

Finally I got tired of clicking and figured I'd just pay the damn money and be done with it. But the system now told me that one of the images I had selected was committed to another show and could not be submitted.  Decided to log out of the system, not yet having given them my credit card or completed the transaction, and log on again, hoping it might let me start from scratch.  No such luck.  I thought about it for a bit, tried to gauge how much I really wanted to be in this show, and decided it was time for a stand on principle, namely that I refused to be jacked around any more by a computer system.

Unspooled, 2015, not entered in the Mid-States Craft Exhibition, Evansville Museum of Art, Evansville IN

I've recently heard some other horror stories about CaFE from a friend who was involved in organizing a show and got to see the output.  The system wants images that are 1920 pixels on the longest side, but "helpfully" is willing to resize the images for you if you upload something larger. Except that my friend swears the helpful system sometimes produces distorted images because it doesn't know how to get the resizing right.

I plan to let the museum know why I didn't enter the show.  I have used lots of online entry systems but haven't kept track of which ones have the features I love or hate.  I know that some systems work way better than others, and it seems that the simpler the system, the better it works.  I for one would much rather upload my images twice than have the system take them hostage in May and not give me control over them in October.

Show organizers, beware the bells and whistles of systems like CaFE that pretend to be "helpful" but are just obstinate.  Artists have better things to do than jump through 27 hoops to enter your show.

Entry woes part 2

The good news is that I decided what to call my knotted sculptures.  The ones coming out of the tea balls are called "Infusions;" the ones coming out of the spools are called "Unspooled."  No "Specimens" in sight.

fabulous photo of tea ball -- knots a bit out of focus

The bad news is that it took me the better part of an hour to do the online entry, and that's not counting the hour or so that I spent getting the photos ready to upload.  I know that online entries don't have to be difficult -- several shows that I have entered in the past have made it painless, even pleasant.  But CaFE, the online entry service that Fiberart International uses, marches to a different drummer.

I neglected to document all the frustrating parts along the way, until I hit about the fifth one, at which point I took screenshots.  I may have forgotten one or two of the bad parts.

It was confusing to navigate around the site; it was confusing to figure out what kind of information they wanted.  You discover only after logging in and starting the application that they want an artist statement (but I've entered two very different kinds of work, and I guess I have to provide a statement for each one, and label each one.  This requires searching through my past files to find relevant statements and edit them down to fit into the 1000-character-limit box.  And one had to be written from scratch.

I'm a fast writer, but still....  I finally finished everything on the page and was wondering "where do I upload my images?"  Scrolled down to the bottom and was trying to read the directions (save the application, then go back to the portfolio page, then come back later...) and was about one second away from hitting the SAVE button when the session timed out.

Grrr.

Fortunately I had had the foresight to do all my writing into a Word document and copy it into the website -- been burned too many times in the past when my writing disappears from a web window -- so logging back in and doing the whole page again didn't take very long.

But now to upload those images.  You had to select a file, then fill in the info about it.

What would you fill in for that "Medium" field?  Would you just write "fiber"?  Or would you list materials?  I wasn't sure, so I picked one and hit SAVE.  Later on there was a field called "Description (optional)".  What if anything would you put in there?

Then I selected the detail shot -- and got the very same screen!  I tried to type in the title of the work and leave the rest blank -- heck, aren't they filing this stuff by title? -- but that didn't work.  I had to type it all over.

Since "series" needed two detail shots, I got to type it in yet again.  I'm a fast typist, but still....

Finally got to the last entry.  I was surprised to find that the piece I was going to enter here was already in my CaFE portfolio; apparently I entered it in another show last year.  But I had taken a better photo since then.  I tried to simply delete the previous version so I could upload the new images.  Sorry; can't do that.  After a bit of thought I decided to type in the title with extra spaces and see if I could slip it by the computer.  That seemed to work.  Typed in the info twice....

Time passed....  the sun went down....   I'm glad I didn't wait till 11:30 to log in in advance of the midnight deadline.  Every time this happens to me I wonder whether anybody from the show committee ever sits down to pretend to do an online entry before choosing which service to use.

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....

Working on entries again

I did three entries on Friday, which pretty much killed the whole day.  And the contrast of the different processes made me realize again how show entries can be structured to make your life easy or miserable.  Let me compare and contrast.

Show #1's calendar:
   March 13 -- final postmark deadline
   Mid-late April -- jurying
   Early May -- email notification sent to artists
   May 22 -- delivery of artwork

Show #2's calendar:
   April 11 -- deadline for receipt of entries
   April 20 -- notification
   April 28 -- delivery of artwork

Both shows have a single juror, so there's no complication of trying to schedule conference calls or sit-downs with more than one person.

My question: Hey, Show #1, why does it take a month or more to open the envelopes, load up the images onto a single CD and get it to the juror?  Then why does it take two or three weeks for the juror to make a decision?

Show #2, by contrast, contracted with the juror several months ago and asked her to block out one day on her calendar when she would commit to the jurying.  With a couple of days of cushion on either side, this show will get the images to her, she'll get the decision back, and the notifications can go out the next day.

When you enter Show #1, you have to put three pieces of art in limbo for almost two months; for Show #2 it's only two and a half weeks.  I've entered shows in the past where the limbo was more like three months, and I always wonder why that's necessary.  I understand why show organizers don't want to put themselves into too tight a box -- somebody could get sick, or her computer could go on the fritz, or a snowstorm might delay mail delivery.  But months of lead time seems like way too loose a box.

And that leads me to discuss Show #3, for which I took quilts to FedEx earlier in the week.  This show combined too-tight and too-loose in the same schedule. After jurying, Show #3 realized that most of the accepted works were on the small side, while the gallery was definitely on the large side; there was way too much empty space left over.  So the juror invited several artists to send works that would fit the same theme as the juried show, and the two groups of artists would be displayed side by side.

I am one of those who will be in the invitational part of the show, and the total elapsed time for issuance of invitation, reply, review of images and confirmation of which quilt they wanted was less than six hours!  That's what I call a speedy review process, and it made me feel exhilarated to be a part of the show.

But then they sent the shipping info, and it transpired that they wanted the quilts to be delivered more than two months in advance of the show.  Perhaps they have an ulterior motive (they're going to do a catalog, but it seems a pricey luxury to reshoot photos...) but they didn't share it with the artists.  It made me wonder what's going on, and a bit of my exhilaration seeped away.

Finally let me complain a bit about Show #4, the entry for which I also wrestled with on Friday.  This is not a brick-and-mortar show but an online series that features a new artist every day.  I was greatly impressed by their online entry form.  It was easy to use, the upload of images worked smoothly, the questions they asked (they write a short essay about each artist, using the info provided on the entry form) were intelligent and perceptive.

I was a happy camper until I got to the demographic info and they wanted to know my age.  I figured it was none of their business, and wrote N/A.  The system kicked it back because I hadn't entered a "valid number."  So I entered "0" and it was accepted.  (At least until a human being takes a look at it, at which point I may get rejected just for noncompliance.)

I don't consider myself a vain person, I'm not ashamed of having reached the grand old age I have, nor do I try to pretend to be 39 any more, but I have a hard time understanding why my age -- or any other artist's age -- is relevant.  This isn't a career retrospective at MoMA or a catalog raisonne, it's a little email with three images of my work and a half paragraph of bio.  I'm obviously not young enough to be labeled as an emerging artist but I sure as hell am not willing to be labeled as a Grandma Moses old lady.  That's a cage that too many older artists -- especially women -- can get shoved into.  The gee-whiz-she's-so-old-it's-surprising-she-can-still-hold-a-needle-and-not-drool-all-over-her-work condescension so easily diverts the focus from one's art to one's age.  And I really want to avoid that stereotype, especially since my medium is so grandmotherly to begin with.

With any luck, I won't have to do any more show entries for a couple of months, and with any luck I won't have to do three of them in one day.  It's enough to drive you to drink.

Crabby about entries again

Yesterday I did my entry for Quilt National '15, feeling quite proud of myself that I finished ONE WHOLE DAY before the deadline.  After my afternoon of struggle with the online system I happened to go back in my blog to that September day two years ago when I entered QN '13 and had a similarly frustrating experience.  I am happy to report that many of the logistical obstacles that I whined about two years ago have been fixed.  But it still took me four emails (three robo-responses, and finally one actual human being) to get logged in to the system.

Crazed 17: Hot Summer -- NOT my QN '15 entry

I will never understand why online entry systems demand that you log on with a password so secure that Chinese hackers couldn't break it, and why they think that you will remember that password from the last time you used the system (in this case, two years ago).

I know that some such systems allow artists to upload a whole lot of images, them pick and choose from that library every time they want to enter a different show.  In that case, a continuing password would be a good idea.  But in systems like QN's, where you have to upload new images this year, wouldn't it be easier if you could just click on the "enter" button without worrying about a password?  Especially since you're explicitly not going to be allowed to go back to your entry after you hit the submit button.

One of the questions on the Quilt National entry asked whether you were a resident of Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Pennsylvania or West Virginia, to quickly sort out entries eligible for the Heartland Award, a $250 prize.  According to the rules, that prize is given to "a resident of Ohio or one of its neighboring states."  So imagine my surprise to discover that Kentucky, where I live, has apparently stopped being a neighboring state of Ohio!

And speaking of residency requirements....

For some reason I chose to work off my frustration yesterday evening by checking through Fiber Art Calls for Entry, the wonderful blog that keeps us posted on all the shows in the world, or so it seems.  And came upon a call that disturbed me, because of the show's eligibility requirement.  This was a show at a museum of the University of South Carolina, and the rules said artists "must have been born in, raised in, or be currently living and working in one of the states that joined the Confederacy....  This eligibility requirement ensures that the prize-winning artworks that will become part of (the) permanent collection are aligned with the Museum's collections policy."

Now I understand quite well that South Carolina, like several other of the Confederate states, has a hard time letting go of that delightful escapade when 750,000 Americans died fighting one another.  But to have a formal policy that a state-sponsored museum will acquire artwork based on participation in a 150-year-old rebellion in defense of slavery strikes me as really pathetic.