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The St Louis Image Workshop
February 25, 2012
review by Robert Wallis |
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other art show
juror interviews and jury reviews |
| Introduction |
| This material has been discussed in Larry Berman's posts
on Art
Fair Insiders many times. This time it is coming from a set of
judges at a major art fair. I'm going to try and summarize what I gleaned
out of the workshop, and what is applicable to most artists. |
| It was a long workshop. It started off
initially with the organizers expecting 25 artists, and it grew, and
quickly swelled to over 190 artists submitting work. Very much to the
credit of the organizers, they agreed to address each and every artist. It
started at 9:00 AM and was slow to get started, as was expected, while the
judges got used to the public forum and personal critique and start
picking up steam. Instead of the one hour lunch break, the judges got
twenty minutes, and soldiered on with a few potty breaks tossed in until
after 8:00 PM. I stayed there until about the last three or four artists
were reviewed, and then the judges talked one-on-one to the few remaining
artists that needed some additional help. For the artists, who weren't
present, a webcast was available and instant messaging allowed questions
and clarifications to be put to the judges. |
| Much of what has been preached in these
forums about cleaning up the booths and consistency of work was hammered
home by the judges. |
| A Consistent Body of Work |
| Consistency of work doesn't mean all
identical pieces or same subject material, but it does mean that all the
pieces need to be in the same style. Two bodies of work or occasionally
three bodies of work would be evident in many of the submissions. All B&W
photos of a waterfall, a couple of flowers, and a meadow are not the same
body of work, even though someone might think, "They're all outdoors shots
of nature, and they're all in the same style; i.e., Black and white".
Sorry, it doesn't work that way. Many repeated examples of it does drive
it home that the pieces need to be strongly connected and not tenuously
connected by a wish. A comment was made by one of the jurors that they
don't want to see examples of luck in getting some pretty pictures. Wood
workers, as an example, were in for the same reasoning. One artist had a
couple of outstanding tables and wood sculpture. The two different bodies
of work could be enough to block them from going past the first round.
They want to see a unified body of work whatever the media. One of the
painters had some plein air work that had the consistency of subject
material, where water was a unifying theme, but the style of brush work
was sufficiently different from piece to piece that it would be difficult
to make it into the second round. There had to be consistency that linked
everything together. |
| One of the comments I picked up was that a
strongly consistent body of work would stand a better chance of going
forward than some outstanding work of higher caliber that was not
consistent as a unified body of work. It may not have been spoken in that
fashion, but that was the distinct impression I picked up. It has to do
with the vision and direction of the artist. It's hard to understand the
direction and vision of disjointed work, but the unified body of work is
what will grab the understanding and appreciation of the judges in the
brief moment of time they have. If they have to stop, think, and ponder
what you're doing as an artist, you're done for the day as it were. |
| The Artist Statement |
| You can't slack off on the artist statement,
contrary to what some of us have thought. For the photographers, you can
skip the part about what printer you're using as part of the statement. I
heard that quite a bit and it's irrelevant. If there is a part about
materials, place it there. If anyone uses something recycled or
repurposed, that seemed to register highly with the jurors. If you draw on
influences from whatever movement or an artist, place that in the artist
statement. Whatever you can say in the materials statement or artist
statement that will make it easier for the judges to understand what
you're doing and understand your vision, the better off you'll be. |
| The Booth |
| The much maligned booth shot turns out to be
a much more critical piece of the puzzle. It can make or break your entry
at the get-go. Don't slack off on it, or you'll be wondering why you're
having to apply to so many shows just to get into a few. The issues that
have been preached ad infinitum really are true. Here's the mantra I heard
the entire day; Simplify and unify. I don't care if it seems
false advertising, it's the same thing you do when you want to sell a
house; stage the damn thing. If you don't get past the gatekeeper, it's
all academic. Here's the big secret about staging the booth shot; it gives
you an opportunity to submit more of your work and show the breadth of it.
You want the jury shots in there, or you're screwed. No visible jury shots
and they wonder what you're selling. No one says the jury shots have to be
front and center, place them on the side (still visible) and get some more
work in there on that back wall. Now you can have 4 to 6 more pieces with
which to impress the jurors, and yes the work in the booth slide is
visible. |
| An awfully high percentage of the booth shots
were just not good, and more than once (actually many times), what was
good competent work would have been knocked out because of an atrocious
booth shot. Different work from the jury shots would seem like a
no-brainer, but it happened many times and that would have been enough to
be knocked out in the first round. The judge's comments were frequently,
"You don't need to show or hang everything you've ever done in the booth
shot". |
| Keep the booth simple, keep it clean, and get
the frou-frou plants and tables out of there. You're not selling plants or
casual tables with a guest book on it. That stuff can go back in during
the show as far as I can tell, but they don't want to see it in the booth
shot, and particularly as frequently the artwork was blocked by the
extraneous stuff like that. One particular issue is make sure that work
doesn’t extend above the sight line of the top of the wall, and do not
crop off your work at the edges of the booth shot. Whether a framed piece
or wearable fabric, show it in it’s entirety. Cropping it off diminishes
it and reduces the effectiveness of the booth image. |
| Grid walls came in for their share of grief
in the comments. Not because of what they were, but because of how they
were used. Fabric artists seemed to get the worst of that, as only two or
three shots of their booths made effective use of the display. Most
wearable fabric booths had clothing on hangers packed in tightly, and the
grid walls would obscure the work. The most impressive wearable fabric
artists had their work hanging flat and straight on to the viewer, and
would hang a piece of the grid wall more like a retail display. Show the
work, not the grids. |
| Potters seem to have a problem with the work
all merging into one undistinguishable mass. Arranging pedestals in
descending order from the back corners forward seemed to be a good visual
method of separating them out away from each other. Jewelers seldom had
display photos across the back, and those are relatively inexpensive to
have printed. |
| A key issue in booth design was to make sure
the booth had a visual rhythm to it. As the jurors pointed out, you're
spending large amounts of time and money on your work, don't blow it with
an amateurish display, Some of the booth shots had 2D work sitting on the
ground, and that received a fair amount of scorn as it looked like a trunk
sale or yard sale. Place the same amount of thought and art design into
the booth as you do your work. |
| The salient points of the booth shots are to
get in close, crop out the ceiling as much as possible, show all the walls
as best as possible (no corner shots), light it well, no open back walls
showing the landscape behind, keep it clean and neat, and minimal. |
| The Art Images |
| Much of what has been said about the jury
shots themselves is what we've been hearing around here. Use gradient
backgrounds, don't use a white background, and keep all the jury shots in
the same lighting style and make sure they match. Don't get too fancy with
the Photoshop lighting effects to the point where the lighting becomes the
focus of the shot. If the work itself is dark, make sure the image will
separate out from the darker background and not get lost in the ZAPP black
surround. |
| Conclusion |
| The two key things to take away from the
workshop are the consistency of work as a unified solid body of work along
with the consistency of lighting for 3D work, and to have a clean,
simplified, and unified booth shot that utilizes principles of aesthetic
design itself that will promote yourself and your work in a completely
professional manner. |
| A shorter version of this review has been
posted to the
blog section of Art Fair Insiders. Sign up if you're not already a
member. |
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