On Wednesday, February 24 the Broad Ripple Art Fair conducted their open jury for the 2016 Indianapolis-area show held on May 21-22, 2016. The jurying was held in the small auditorium of the Indianapolis Art Center, which has a raised stage and theater seating. The jurors were placed at a table positioned in front of the first row of seats and at the left front corner of the stage.
Three jurors viewed applications from "almost 500" applicants in order to fill approximately 230 spots. The 3 work images and 1 booth image were displayed on a large screen suspended on the stage and were arranged in a 2x2 grid pattern -- a work image in the upper left and upper right, another work image in the lower left and the booth image in the lower right. Obviously this arrangement negated any time spent arranging the order of images into a pleasing linear display on Zapp. Oh well.
Judging by category followed the typical pattern. First every image set in the category was shown briefly, about 2 seconds per entry, then the pace slowed for the actual judging. Each set of images was displayed for 30 seconds while the artist's statement was read aloud. Jurors were asked to assign a score of 1-7, with 7 the highest, and no 4. There was no discussion among the jurors that I could see/hear. The show director didn't say how many were accepted in each category, only that an algorithm worked it out.
Total number of entries in each category was sometimes announced; Digital was the smallest category at 5 entries and Jewelry was the largest, of course, at 149 (or thereabouts). Most of the categories fell in the range of 35-45 entries.
Some interesting notes about jury instructions.
1. Jurors were told to judge based on the quality, innovation, originality, technical mastery, etc of the work. The director stressed that they should NOT judge based on sellability. "Selling the work is the artist's responsibility once they get to the show; you are judging the merits of the work only." (Note: At the Columbus Arts Festival open jury a couple of weeks ago their director said the opposite (I paraphrase): "Of course you're looking at the quality of the work, but you are deciding who will be in the show based on how well you believe their work will sell (emphasis his) to the patrons who attend in this Columbus, Ohio area. You are not curating a museum exhibit, you are filling an art show."
2. Broad Ripple show staff had reviewed all the applications ahead of time and if an entry seemed to them to be in the wrong category they moved it to what they felt was the more appropriate category. (Note: at Columbus, getting into the correct category is seen as the artist's responsibility. If they don't meet the definition of the category in the eyes of the jury when it's read aloud, they're disqualified rather than moved.)
3. If the artist's name or logo is visible in the booth shot their score is deducted by one point (on the 1-7 scale with no 4). As an aside, twice I heard the name included in the artist's statement, such as "Jane Smith's work is a combination of...". Don't know if the jurors caught that, and if so whether they deducted points, but including your name seemed like a bad idea to me.
4. Some booth shots were not booth shots, but rather a collection of work on a table or sculptures in a field. The director stated that the purpose of the booth shot is to see how work will be displayed at the show, so if it's not a real booth shot "score accordingly."
Finally, two observations about this particular jury, and these are strictly my opinion and I could be wrong.
1. The 3 jurors seemed well qualified in terms of art education and they specialized in a variety of specific mediums (which indicated to me that they were working artists or at least instructors, which is good, but of course many of the mediums were not represented on the jury). They were all fairly young, maybe late twenties to mid 30s, and I always wonder about the depth and breadth of the juror's experience when they're under 40. Then again they're probably more in touch with the new and innovative than a baby boomer might be. Gross generalizations, I know.
One juror in particular seemed to be very green; questions during instructions gave me the impression the juror had never done this before and probably had never even attended a jury before. I know everyone has to learn somehow, and an Art Center is all about education after all, so perhaps jurying is part of their on-the-job training so to speak. Still, I couldn't help but think of the hundreds of professional artists who do this for a living and who literally put their financial future in the hands of juries ... well, you get my drift.
2. I accidentally heard two of the jurors talking during a break. Juror 1: "I wonder if we'll get to see all the scores so we'll know how everybody rated each one." Juror 2: "Yeah, it would be interesting to see how our tastes differ." I'm prepared to give the jurors the benefit of the doubt and believe that when Juror 2 said "taste" it was actually just a poor choice of words and that the juror was well aware that images should be judged on merit and not on what a juror personally likes or doesn't like. Sigh.
My overriding impression as I walked out the door? Everybody seemed to be trying hard and taking it seriously. Having said that, show applications are indeed a crap shoot. You never really know what the show wants, what the jurors want, what the competition will be, ad nauseum.
Too much knowledge about show jurying can be a depressing thing.
Comments
Different shows handle it differently. Some shows only let artists observe the first of two or three or more rounds. They also don't let the jurors speak to each other until the second round preferring observers not to hear the comments. Fort Worth and Cherry Creek are like that. Columbus and Broad Ripple allow the comments to be heard and Columbus even encouraged discussion by jurors if necessary.
For the most part, you're only there to see how your images project and compare to your competition. Comments are usually irrelevant in the great scheme of things because jurors change from year to year and from show to show.
Larry Berman
Thanks for this interesting post. I was just at the Uptown jury last weekend. One thing that just came to mind after reading this is that at the Uptown jury they didn't let the artists that were there to watch hear any comments about how they were to jury. Then again I got there late so I might have missed it. But whenever there was a break the organizers would speak to the jurors for 5 or so minutes before letting us in again. We all wondered why that was.
Overall it was interesting to see the categories that I was able to see. One thing I got a lot out of this time around was listening to other artist's 100 character statement. There were some statements that really helped me visual how the work was created and got me more interested in the pieces. In particular I remember one glass artists talking about using wet newspaper to form their pieces. Then there were the very technical statements that if you weren't really familiar with the medium they just went right over my head. I will definitely be rewriting my statement to try to give the juror and more precise visual image about the way I create. Also there were people that really wasted their 100 characters- putting in things like "My husband and I" when it could have said "we" and one that said "last summer was my first year of doing shows".
Always something to learn at these things! Thanks again for sharing.
Karen--
Thanks for the great post. I've never been to a jury, so it was really interesting.
The Midwest division of Professional Photographers of America is having a competition in March. They are streaming the judging, which might be interesting to watch, even though it is not for entry to an art fair. They'll be streaming it from 9AM to 6PM Mountain Time March 11-13 at:
http://ppa.informz.net/z/cjUucD9taT01Mzg4NTg0JnA9MSZ1PTEwNzUyNjA0Mz...
This simpler URL has all the info:
http://www.ppa.com/competitions/content.cfm?ItemNumber=6986&utm...
PPA has well defined judging criteria at
http://www.ppa.com/competitions/content.cfm?ItemNumber=1792
It might be worth checking into from time to time.
--David
Hi Christine - Yes, I agree that a youthful jury can be a good thing. As long as a juror's credentials are good and they approach the job thoughtfully, that's good enough for me. In jurying as in any other job, the energy and innovation of youth can counterbalance the deeper and subtle knowledge older people often gain through years of experience on the planet.
My ideal jury would be filled with solidly credentialed jurors in a range of ages and/or experience in the industry.
Excellent post, Karen.
I'd like to add couple of comments. I've been to the open jurying several times in the past, though not last year or this year.
They may not have made this statement this year, but it was made previously. When a category is small, the judges are supposed to judge only on the merit of the art, not the category itself. By this I mean they are not supposed to raise the scores of something they don't think is suitable only so that the category is represented at the art fair. If a particular category is not represented at all because the work was rejected, the art fair will accept that decision.
When a category is large though, like painting or jewelry, the scores to get in might have to be higher that something like wood that is generally smaller. There is a floating minimum score because of the size of categories. To me, this makes sense.
Regarding the age and qualifications of the jurors, it doesn't bother me in the least that it sounds as if they were young. (But they accepted me, so of course I'm happy with them!) Seriously, if you have a working artist or gallery owner under the age of 40, it's highly possible that they are completely steeped in the art world and therefore highly qualified. Older artists who show up at art fairs are often people who "got into" art post retirement or simply later in life. Not always, obviously. Many older artists have been at it forever. Anyway, that's my 2 cents for what it's worth. I know that they are careful making the selection of who they ask to jury the show.
Karen, thank you for the post. Very informative, very helpful. Thank you for attending, and for this thoughtful, clear post.
Hi Karen! Thank you for the post. I just wanted to add to it since I was there for the painting category later in the day. First of all, one of the three jurors is the head of a small arts organization/gallery in Speedway, IN. Not sure if she is an artist. The other two people I did not recognize and yes, they looked young. I have been to see this process three times now and never fail to learn something. There were so many applications with really, really cluttered booths & names visible on paintings & some on booth signage. There were 68 applications in painting and I do not know how many painters were accepted but I found myself wait-listed sadly. I got in the last two years but went to other shows so I guess this is karma for me because I really wanted to stay home this year and do this show! Hopefully will get in. One thing about this kind of jury set up is that anything 'white' seems to get 'blown out' on the screen when projected.