If you are an artist, you are probably in the throes of not only doing shows but also applying to shows for next year and receiving rejected/wait listed/accepted emails for shows that are way down the pike. The jury process is a bit of a mystery to us all... we work hard to make beautiful pieces, have them professionally photographed, and then we upload them to Zapp or send them to the show in some other way and we wait. We sometimes stress about needing new jury images, worried that jurors will remember that we've sent the same group of images for a couple of years in a row. Somehow we think fresher might capture their eye or make them think "wow! that person is doing something different!".
Well, after discussing the process with my friend Daryl Thetford, who was selected to be on the jury for Des Moines this year, and also emailing about it with his wife Dana Lise Shavin, and after the many discussions I had with artists after jurying the Plaza Art Fair... the fact remains that it's a totally rustic, rudimentary process. It's really based on what the jurors like. It's all gut instinct. Do the images look good? Do they grab you? They should flash on the screen and make you think wow! cool! or some other one-word positive expression that doesn't even come close to "huh?" because rarely is there time in a big jury to really talk about what's being done in the artwork or the process involved to do it.
The tips Daryl and I discussed are that simple images are better. They need to be easy to read. They need to read as a group; there should be some connecting feature that doesn't make them redundant. Maybe each image has red in it, or there are all rings, or each piece has a pearl, or they are all birds... whatever theme seems to connect the images at a quick glance. We all get concerned that the judges will pigeon-hole us or single us out during the show by saying "I thought you only made rings" as they walk by... really, they probably won't quite remember. And, if you are allowed to submit a booth shot, that's what a booth shot can do for you -- not only does a booth shot help to convey your image and branding and personality at a show, but it can also show that you do a variety of work and have plenty of pieces to keep your "store" full and merchandised throughout the show. Daryl and I both found that booth shots could truly make or break a candidate if it came down to discussing a category that had too many artists in it (after the big round of jurying was done). Make sure you have a great, accurate booth shot, but more importantly, make sure you have a beautifully designed booth! We were not judging the quality of the booth shot images, but more analyzing the way the work was presented, the art was hung, the scale and number of pieces available... the overall aesthetic of the shopping and display environment created.
