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.
