So I am one of the few artists who ventured out yesterday into the blizzard to attend the open jury for Krasl. It was the first and best opportunity I have had to attend an open jury, and I didnt figure waiting until next year for better weather would make sense!
The jury was from 9 a.m. until around 6ish p.m. depending on when they wrapped everything up. I got there around 10:30 and hung out in the warmth until about 4:30- I mean, what else would I do on a Friday? They had just finished Digital art and had already gotten through with clay (functional and non-functional) when I sat down.
Others have posted about how these juries work, so this one was much the same. Krasl uses the Zapp system and projects the images while also providing laptops for each juror to view on their own. When starting a new category, they would project an overview of all the artists in the group, quickly flipping through each submission. After the "quick look" they would start over, dedicating to each artist about as much time as it took someone to read the artist's 300 word statement out loud. While the images were being projected, each juror had the ability on their laptop to take closer looks at the images and booth shots.
A side note on artist statements. For the most part the entire process was very professional. The only time there was ever a slip in the manner of the jurors was NEVER at the work shown, but a few times at the statement read to accompany it. This is a whole nother discussion, but it lead me to wonder if, as artists, everyone REALLY wants more words allotted in a statement vs fewer. Some of the statements seemed like the more words they were given, the more wrinkled our foreheads got in confusion. Anyway... I digress...
I sat through the majority of the categories, (Drawing, Decorative and Wearable Fibers, Glass, Precious and Non Precious Jewelry, Metals, 2 and 3 D Mixed Media, Oils, Acrylics, Watercolors, and watched the overview of all 141 Photographers) before I had to leave. Photography had the highest number of submissions with only 16 open spots for the 141 applicants. NP Jewelry was next with 123 submissions for 7 spots.
My personal observations from this one jury process were enlightening, and as others have said, will definitely help one feel better about rejections due to all the great work and subjectivity of the jurors. While the jurors are instructed to keep comments to themselves, it is interesting to be there and hear the slip ups as they raise eyebrows, or whisper amongst themselves. The rating system used for Krasl (not sure if it is Krasl's or Zapp's) but they ask for a 1-10 rating eliminating 5 as an option. This is such a wide range of numbers that I overheard one juror say he would have an easier time if the options were, "Definitely, Maybe, and Meh." As they scrolled through the submissions on their personal screens, each category had pages of about 10 artists per page that they rated then went to the next page. One juror complained several times that (especially in the bigger categories) he was having a tough time with only being able to see a certain number of artists on his personal screen at a time. He said this was leading him to feel as though he were just judging the artists on each page against each other and picking the best from each page as opposed to being able to think of the category as a whole. The Krasl staff said this was a Zapp programming issue that they were not in control of.
Lastly, I was able to observe the Zapp image sizing issues that Larry Berman so often refers to. If you were aware of the issue you could see the difference between the images with an entire black square around them vs the ones that were formatted with black bars on either just the sides or top and bottom (making them larger), otherwise some images just looked smaller than others. I tried to watch the jurors as intently as the projections and it is hard to say how this issue affects their process. Half of the jurors seemed to see the projections while the other half seemingly stared at their own laptop the whole time, barely even glancing at the big screen. All of the images looked nice to me, but I can see how those with smaller images may feel slighted by the process.
Honestly the whole thing moves so fast that I felt like some of the jurors had to play catch up as they went. When you take the time to distinguish whether an artist is an 7 or an 8, you miss the projection of the next artist entirely! And while you have everything on your own screen, it is tough to be as discerning with everyone as one might like to be, so it seemed eventually you have to click 7, 7, 7, 7... just to keep up. Plus, at a show like Krasl, there were not may submissions that I thought would have garnered lower than a 6-if even that low, which completely eliminated the lower half of the bar anyway.
While these complaints and others were brought up during the process, the staff from Krasl simply said they do their best with the constraints they have to work with, which I know is true for every system. There seems to be no stellar way to perfect a jury process, so I thought the Krasl team was wonderful in the way they addressed these issues and other questions as they arose.
Sara Shambarger, the director of art fairs for Krasl, was wonderful and friendly. There were so few of us there, she even offered the artists to join the buffet lunch they had catered for the jurors. She was very sweet to check in with whoever was there viewing the process and I appreciated her efforts to make sure everyone was comfortable.
Just my observations from a day spent in a way that only an artist could appreciate! I got a couple nice images of some of the beautiful work being projected, but didnt know if anyone would like me posting it or not, so I am settling on showing you the general set up...
Couldnt get the photo to display right side up, so maybe the attachment will do it?
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Excerpt from this review: "Lastly, I was able to observe the Zapp image sizing issues that Larry Berman so often refers to. If you were aware of the issue you could see the difference between the images with an entire black square around them vs the ones that were formatted with black bars on either just the sides or top and bottom (making them larger), otherwise some images just looked smaller than others. I tried to watch the jurors as intently as the projections and it is hard to say how this issue affects their process. Half of the jurors seemed to see the projections while the other half seemingly stared at their own laptop the whole time, barely even glancing at the big screen. All of the images looked nice to me, but I can see how those with smaller images may feel slighted by the process."
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Thank you to Elissa for writing this thoughtful and thorough review.
Now, let's all cue up Taylor Swift and sing, "This should never, ever, ever, ever happen."
It's the year 2013, and yet we, as artists, still have little idea about how our images will look when displayed to jurors, let alone the hardware configuration with which they will be seen.
When I read this excerpt, my jaw literally dropped. If ZAPP is going to offer itself as a de facto service for handling jury images, then it is incumbent upon them to ensure that these types of sizing issues never, ever occur. Whether this means improving their online interface, their instructions to applicants, the type of projection equipment used for on-site juries, or their education of show organizers, I don't know. But with a jury fee required for every application, a system to ensure uniform viewing conditions (ie, consistent image size) is not too much to ask.
Many artists' livelihoods depend upon jurying into these shows. There should be no confusion or -- as the link on Larry's page characterizes it, a "bug in the system" -- with how the image sizes display (Yes, I know, he assures us that this glitch really does not affect the final viewing). But this is basic stuff, and I'm incredulous that in 2013 this is the best result we can achieve through an online jurying service. These types of inconsistencies are precisely what will put some applicants at a distinct disadvantage when their stuff comes up tinier than everyone else.
Beyond this, I continue to be dismayed that there is no standard with either ZAPP or Juried Art Services for color temperature / brightness. Nowadays, we all have access to affordable computer monitor calibration devices. We could, conceivably, make use of guidance about white point, gamma, and luminance from these online jury systems. For example: "We recommend calibrating your display to gamma 2.2, your color temperature to D65, and your luminance to 120 cd/m." (Gamma, color temperature, and luminance are three basic settings of display calibration hardware.) This information would allow us to closely approximate on our monitors how things will look to a juror. While these display calibration systems are not perfect, they are a vast improvement over the uncertainty about the color temperature / brightness of the bulb in the slide projector from the old days.
Yet neither online system offers any guidance in this area. I understand that projectors may not be adjustable to these values, but individual juror monitors at the site certainly could be calibrated.
Maybe someday we can all leap into 2013 and avail ourselves of better systems. Egads.
Sarah,
I appreciate your response as it was well thought out and informative. I plan to share the responses with ZAPP to see what we can do to improve our process. I would love to talk with you about this so that we can do all we can to maximum the jury process for 2014.
Thanks again Sarah.
Thank you for posting this. I am one of the 123 NP artists hoping for a yes. This is my first year applying, and so far it has been a terrifying and hope-crushing process, as I have received 4 nos from my ZAPPs so far. Here's to a yes at last!
Great review and insights Elissa, thank you!
Hi Elissa,
Thank you for attending and for your report on the jurying for the Krasl Art Fair on the Bluff. Your observations, feedback and the other artist’s responses have been helpful and appreciated.
I was not aware of the option that Larry Berman referred to regarding what artists see on their laptops. I should have been, but that is a lapse on my part to not know the jurying options that Zapp offers.
We rent the equipment from ZAPP because we think this gives artists the best advantage to viewing their work.
Part of my inital verbal instructions to the jury includes looking at the projected images for viewing, not their screen. (Jurors must look at the screen to score). Some jurors may have clicked on an image to enlarge it for further detail, though I did not give instructions about that.
The technical coordinator for the jurying timed each artist while their work was projected. Each artist received a minimum of 10 to 24 plus seconds, depending on the length of their artist statements.
Our intention is to have an open, transparent jury process. Any ideas, suggestions and or feedback to help us improve our process are most welcome.
Thanks Sara!
I was glad to be able to attend and thankful to you and your staff for being accommodating, courteous and thoughtful. This was my first opportunity to attend an open jury and it was informative and enlightening to all of the artists there. Thank you for being open and understanding while those of us who are new learn more about jurying. I appreciate you working along side people like Larry in a tireless effort to improve the process as a whole.
Nice thorough review.
There are a few things I want to address in how Krasl is running their jury and I won't be able to get into the detail that's necessary because I'm sitting in the St Louis airport waiting to fly home.
The issue with the jurors looking down at the images on their net books should never have been allowed. It should have immediately been stopped. In the back end of the system, the show should have set it up so only the number 1 image at the far left of the projection should show, not the other images at all. That would force the jurors to look up at the images on screen, and then they would be judging an entire category and not the ten artists on a scoring page. I've observed open juries and have read about jurors looking down, but not since ZAPP started.
Larry Berman
Yeah, I know you will know more about the ins and out of how these things work. My observation was just that each juror was able to click on and enlarge all 5 images on their own screen at their discretion, eliminating the need to look up at all if they didn't want to. I wasn't there for the beginning when they were given instruction, but 3 of the 5 jurors seemed to take advantage of the projections on the big screens, while the other 2 seemed more intent on their laptops.
Just got home.
It's not that I may know more about the system. It's that the system is projection jurying and the director should never allow the jurors to judge the images based on looking at them on monitors. And in reference to the other ZAPP image screw up, when the jurors enlarge the images in the mode they are seeing them, the bottoms are cut off for squares and verticals because they score on 1024x768 net books. It sounds like the director didn't have enough control over the jury process.
You've brought up some good issues that should have been corrected years ago. I'm going to ask ZAPP to contact Sara this week and discuss some changes in the way they do the jurying.
Larry Berman
http://BermanGraphics.com
412-401-8100
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