We The Jury

The early years

For most of us, the word jury conjures up the official summons for civic duty, a mandatory “request” temporarily inviting us to join a group of our peers for the purpose of pronouncing guilt or innocence upon the accused.

For artists who’ve run away and joined the festival circuit, the term jury means almost the same thing.



A later incarnation

 Many times over the years, while Groom and I have been in our jewelry booth, innocent customers have asked the question, “So did you guys just show up here and set up your tent?”

Yep, that’s exactly how it happened, except for NOT.

Let me tell you how it’s done. First, we have to cultivate a list of viable shows. This requires a lot of research and sometimes money, because a few smart people - after having discovered how much effort it takes to track down the names of art fairs and festivals, who the promoters are, the dates of the show, the application process, the jurying fee, the deadlines, the criteria and etc., ad infinitum - have decided to keep this information secret and sell it for a lofty price.

Just because a person now has possession of the coveted list does not necessarily mean all of the shows are practical or profitable. More research is required, picking the brains of other artisans who may or may not have previously participated.

So much of one’s success depends on weather, the economic status of the town (or state as we have recently learned on a trek to California), the location of the show (shady park or sizzling street), the length of time it has been operating, how much advertising the promoters are willing to do, well, you get the idea.

In the Pacific Northwest, climate dictates the relatively short show season, so as is often the case, several prime shows occur on the same weekend which quite frankly is heartbreaking. If only they would stagger themselves on the calendar for a more user friendly dance card. It seems as though they all get bunched up at once, having us travel from one corner of Washington to the mid-section of California within the span of a week, leaving no time for rest, stock infusion or petting the cat.

Once the list is in hand, the calendar looking like a drunken game of connect-the-dots, the application process begins.

When we first made our debut, back in ‘91, we were selling exclusively at the Eugene Saturday Market. One day, a promoter of a local show invited us to participate and we were given a lovely booth spot and some column inch space in the newspaper as an “invited artist.” Wow, that was easy.

A promoter of another show saw our work and invited us to apply to theirs up in the Portland area, but said we’d have to take photos and fill out a form. Well, okay. So I just rifled through our box of stock and selected a few pieces that seemed intent on becoming our “best sellers.” Holding them in one hand, I just went out into the front yard and took the photo myself with the other.

Yes, I had to take the film to the drugstore and have it developed, but that was it. I simply dropped five pictures and the application form into whatever envelope I had and mailed it. We got in. The early 90’s were like that.



Nice hair shadow!



In some cases, we actually had to drive to the host town, such as Bellevue, Washington, months prior to the show so that the promoters could take a look-see at our work. If they liked it, we were in, which they did and so we were. Of course, this was expensive as we had to spend money on gas, hotel and food, plus take the time out of our creating schedule to do it, but that’s how it was done so we did it.

After a few seasons applying for shows in that fashion, things began to change. Instead of print photographs, some shows were starting to demand slides, so we had to invest in double the film and developing. After a couple few years of that, most of the shows got on the same page and they all went to slides.

Instead of a local promoter simply looking at the photos included in the envelope and deciding upon which vendors to include, now a bunch of slide projectors had to be set up, all the multitudes of little slides had to be placed into the slide projectors right side up and time set aside to look at them all, one right after the other.

Photographs allowed the promoters time to think, as they could look at them one by one as the mail brought them in until the deadline. They could put them in different piles to mull it over and see what else showed up. We usually got in.

When they switched to slides, suddenly the promoter (and probably some friends or family) had to sit in the dark and see one image after the other, or perhaps all of one artist’s projected simultaneously. Whatever the case, it was overwhelming and after awhile, they all sort of ran together and they got tired and we started not to get in.

After panicking a bit, this is our living after all, we learned that a panel of professional artists had been hired to look at the slides and weed the good from the bad. This was called a jury. Yep, they would pronounce sentence on our artwork and we would be allowed in the show and make some money, or rejected and allowed to starve.

More panic and research ensued. Those who were getting in were paying professional photographers to take the slide shots. For those in the jury, the quality of the slide is what became noticeable and separated the chaff from the wheat.

Suddenly, we had to fork out hundreds of dollars for what we’d been doing ourselves. But the quality of our slides went up and we were getting into the better shows, so it all paid off. Phew!

But evolution marches on and the digital age encroached upon us. Now, it seemed, it was easy peasy to take digital shots of one’s own work. This opened up the field and more and more people started applying to shows, creating a shortage of spaces compared to the overwhelming number of applicants.

We still managed to get in, until… Until those with advanced computer skills raised the bar and now the quality of digital shots had to be flawless. Until a company called Zapplication became the standard by which we all have to apply. Until we started not getting into as many shows.

More panic and research. One now cannot just have flawless digital images. One must create a body of work that has theme and focus. A collection, if you will. We cannot submit work that the customers like, no, because what do they know; they’re just voting with their money.

Insert ominous music here. THE JURY. A panel of our superiors passing judgment on those who will live and those who will die.

Even if the craftsmanship is impeccable, the theme must pass muster. As the jury has between 5-6 seconds (seconds, not minutes) to make their decision, they have been given a point system to use. They judge on a scale of 1-5 with no three’s allowed, which means when they see an image they either give it a one or a two or a four or a five. No middle ground, they either like it or hate it. At the end, those artists with the highest scores are in and those with the lowest…must I say it?

I have since learned that many themes are passé, such as dragonflies and hummingbirds. Juries loathe cute. If it’s popular, fogetaboutit.

The work must be evocative, but not provocative. Any religious imagery is out, for one member of the panel might be very religious and think the work is sacrilege, while another might be an atheist and find it offensive.

One cannot pull from pop culture like Dorothy and the Wizard of Oz or Marilyn Monroe for they’ve been done to death. Or say familiar like the Eiffel tower, for one juror might have been engaged near the iconic structure and smile with passion at the reminder while another might have been jilted by a lover in Paris and seethe with anger and take it out on the applicant stupid enough to use it.

The secret unknowable list goes on, topics that are permissible and more that are not. The photographs also have to be composed in such a way that the first image points to the right so that the juror’s eyes follow naturally to the next, while the last image must point up and to the left so their attention does not wander. In the 5 seconds!

Also, all components must be handmade; no more commercial parts such as earwires, jumprings, chain, charms and beads.

And the background. Phew! One must know what the color du jour is a la mode before hand. One season it was all white, but now, any artist who has their work photographed in white does themselves and the artist following them in the lineup a disservice. Why? Because in the dark, a white background is so bright, that the jurors eyes don’t have time to adjust before the next set of slides appear and even if the next artist has done everything exactly right, they may still get penalized on the basis of pupil dilation.

Another year it was all black. Now the trend seems to be a gradient from white to black or some such thing. How to learn all of this before forking out the cash?

Even after the collection, or body of work has been artfully and creatively thought out, photographed by the best in the biz, the images must then be sent to another enterprising fellow for professional cropping, Photoshop magic and layout. Then those images must be sent to another consultant on the east coast for his opinion as to their merit.

It’s all so bloody time consuming and expensive.

And so, to answer that innocent question, “Did you guys just show up here and set up your tent?”

We wish.

Exhausted Fumes

Unfasten your seatbelts folks; it’s going to be a short ride. I’m guessing things have happened on planet earth this week, but from a cloistered, myopic viewpoint, I have little to report or say as my eyes try to refocus, temporarily shifting from the tiny world of beads, charms, rivets and rusty metal to the larger screen of font and photographs.

Groom and I have been on the road for most of May and we are scheduled to leave in a week for Spokane’s ArtFest. This means creating in a high-pressure cooker and I am not a create in a high-pressure cooker kind of person, especially when we are in the midst of designing a new line of jewelry, so everything is experimental and takes about a hundred times longer.

For instance, I was operating under the misimpression that a jewelers saw blade had teeth only for metal and was not interested in human flesh, much like a cast cutter. Wrong! I am now cured of that dubious information. Slicing through copper, my saw blade jumped course and landed on my left index finger with a little muscle behind it, leaving serrated skin in its wake. Whoo-ey, makes me know I’m alive.

Speaking of alive, I must take this opportunity to wish a couple people Happy Birthday. Val and Gypsy Sole, you know who you are, so many happy returns. S’pose I could mention other birthday boys and girls like musician Lenny Kravitz, actress Helena Bonham Carter, or Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark, but that would simply be empty calorie space-filling, so I’ll probably skip it.

The truly juicy gossip is always off-limits and forbidden territory, so I must skirt around it, painting over it with a second-string line up much like brushing latex over rust. Oh well…

Eeek, Groom is getting scruffy and needs a haircut, the house is just begging for a cleaning, my correspondence requires answering, the clothes I’d like to wear for dinner this evening are wrinkly, my belly is growling because it’s time for breakfast. Gee, my inner thoughts are spellbinding, aren’t they?

Ooh ooh, we did witness a spectacular rainbow this week though, two octaves of color with shades of hot pink thrown in for good measure. Part of the sequestering, in addition to focusing on work, has been because of the rain. The weather report has been the same, I wanna say for weeks now, rain, precipitation, 93% humidity with a chance of T-storms in the afternoon. Walls of grey, a ceiling of slate, the color of granite underfoot. It’s enough to make one beg for a little variety in the color palette, so thank you rainbow!

I suppose like the Inuit and their expanded vocabulary for snow, those of us residing in the Pacific Northwest, also know our shaded scale. Let’s see, there’s charcoal, iron, lead, silver, slate, ashen, mousy, powder, oyster, gunmetal, dove, pearl, sere, withering, cement, pebble, depression, mourning, aluminum, stainless steel, space age metal, titanium…

Oh, and the photographs? Did we have our cameras with us for rainbow preservation? Nooo, because it was raining. However, this week’s pics picks are random shots that we’d like to share. Remember, and I haven’t said this in awhile, you can always enlarge for better details by clicking on them and then hitting the back button to return to the blog.

Yep, many happy returns!

09-09-09

Hello. If you are reading this on Wednesday, then lucky you! Why? Because this is a very special date. It is 09-09-09. There will not be another single-digit repeating date until New Year’s of next century, or January 1, 2101 - 01-01-01, provided any of us are still around.

Perhaps today is a good day to buy a lottery ticket, complete any of that old, unfinished business, take a risk, make that phone call, tell somebody you haven’t talked to for awhile that you love them. It’s special because it’s alignment! I love alignment. In fact, I am aligned, right here right now.

That’s it for my soap box sermon, for this week finds us on the road to Idaho (which I’m sure will be a source of unusual fodder for the next episode of Frida’s Travels), so in lieu of a wordy entry today we have gleaned a few visual highlights from the 500 plus photos taken at the Lane County Fair. As we bid adieu to Summer (very quickly, it would seem), these shots can remind us that it was indeed warm and dry just a short time ago…