How To Get REJECTED From Every Art Show.
*WARNING INTENSE SARCASM AHEAD*
It's every artists goal in their creative life to be rejected again and again right? We thrive on those lovely little emails that say our work "wasn't quite the right fit" for this show or that competition. As a professional, I have created this step-by-step guide so that you too can spend countless hours and hundreds of dollars getting no where.
1. Take Crap Photos.
I would definitely suggest using an old camera phone, nothing that has been upgraded in the last 10 years. You wouldn't want the image to be crisp and clear.
in my experience extreme fluorescent lighting works the best. Don't use natural lighting. Strong highlights and shadows are the way to go!
DON'T crop your images. Just leave all the junk on your bedroom floor in the photo, the jurors love seeing that!
And for the love of GOD do NOT have your artwork professionally photographed. That is the worst thing you could do.
2. Be Lazy as fuck
Don't do any research on the competition or show you are entering. Who cares if the juried show is showcasing landscapes and all you have to enter are portraits of your neighborhood dogs? Does it really matter that a particular gallery represents mostly installation artists and you work only in 2 dimensions? No, it doesn't matter at all.
3. Label your work however you wish.
Most galleries and art competitions have very specific guidelines for how an artist is to submit their work. screw that. you want your submission to stand out from the rest right? the most effective way to stand out from the very beginning is to throw the submission guidelines right out the window and do your own thing.
4. Submit Everything!
Please don't make the same mistakes that so many other artists make and submit works to a gallery or juried show that are cohesive. Galleries want to see a little bit of everything you can do. go ahead and send in that lovely abstract right along side the black and white photograph and the wood bowl you crafted in shop class. no need for a theme or collection to tie your work together, its much easier to sell all the random shit together.
5. and lastly, don't learn anything from those rejection letters
after all, who do these jurors think they are anyways? how dare they reject a body of work for obvious reasons? go ahead and just quit right there. don't pick up the pieces and do better with the next application. Don't read the fine print a little better next time. don't spend the extra few hours at your computer making sure the images you are submitting are perfect. Don't let someone you trust read your artists' bio to make sure there aren't any spelling mistakes.
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