This year, the Saltonstall Arts Colony received close to 100 applications in the visual arts category for 8 finalists.
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or ~1:12.5, or ~8%
See all Art Competition Odds.
This year, the Blue Mountain Center received over 330 applications for 42 residency spaces.
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or ~1:8, or ~13%
See all Art Competition Odds.
Save time: If you answer NO to any of the following questions, simply move on from this particular opportunity. Leave it. Be on to the next thing.
Are you eligible?
E.g., basic requirements for geographic restrictions, student status, etc.
Are you an appropriate candidate?
E.g., if disciplines, languages, or career/experience levels are specified.
Are you willing to pay the entry fee?
Are you willing to pay or find financial assistance for fees or costs associated with the opportunity?
Consider travel, accommodations, shipping, insurance, materials, framing, overhead (time off of work, studio and home rent while away), etc. Consider that stipends and reimbursements may be issued as taxable income, fiscal sponsors often take a 10-15% administrative fee, and international bank transfers and checks incur transaction fees.
Do the potential benefits of applying outweigh the costs of applying?
E.g., who are the jurors and how much is a few seconds or minutes of their attention worth to you?
If selected, will the benefits of participating outweigh the costs and risks of participating?
E.g., for exhibitions, how optimal will the viewing conditions be? Who is the venue’s audience? What are the chances your work will be damaged in transport, installation, events, de-installation? For public art projects, how much of the budget will be spent on heavy equipment, insurance, and your own labor over the course of a multi-month or multi-year process? How will your productivity at a residency be affected by its location? How will you access groceries, supplies, and transport?
Are you willing to meet the requirements of the opportunity?
E.g., if residents are required to contribute a work of art to the collection, or eight hours per week teaching, or use headphones in studios; exhibiting artists must submit work ready-to-hang, accept a 50/50 split in the case of sales; grantees must submit a receipts or a final report, etc.
Are you available for the time commitment?
For residencies or fellowships, consider the policies on guests and taking leaves.
Are you willing to list references or request letters of recommendation, if needed?
Do you have adequate time to complete your submittal by the deadline?
For hard copy submittals, note whether the deadline is for receipt or postmark.
Do you have adequate time to develop a proposal you will be happy to realize and a reasonable budget, if required?
Is the call source reputable? Is the call free of red flags? Is the opportunity with a trustworthy organization?
Is the opportunity aligned with your goals as an artist?
If you aren’t sure what your goals are, set some time to write and review your goals in the next 14 days.
Most of the time, I don’t give too much thought to the art competition application process, but a recent application presented two discrepancies that made me take notice.
First, the entry fee was published as $10, but the slide management content management system (CMS) charged $20. This wasn’t a deal-breaker for me, but price variations like that erode my trust a teensy bit.
Second, the application requirements asked for the names of references, with the condition that reference letters would only be requested on behalf of the artists who are selected for a residency. However, the CMS automatically sent requests for letters to the references during the application process.
The additional $10 is a cost I can bear, but I would have been much more sparing with the time, labor, and good will of my esteemed references.
I hope to minimize how much work I ask of these supporters. They are curators and administrators of small alternative arts organizations that are often stretched thin. I can’t imagine how many artists ask them for their time and labor to help them with these favors. I certainly would not want them to do any unnecessary work, especially over the holidays when they are getting much-deserved down time, as was this case. I was embarrassed to impose upon them, especially when I decided to complete the form shortly before the deadline. Had I known about an off-the-bat request, I would have weighed my decision to apply differently.
Online submissions beat hardcopies, however, user interface design and skills are still developing. I sent these notes to the organization; hopefully they’ll get it sorted for next year’s annual call.
Here’s a big cheer to those arts organizations who do it right — who mind their p’s and q’s as closely as they’d want applicants to.
And loads of gratitude to those unsung supporters who help artists and jurors turn open calls into real-life opportunities and experiences. Cheers to you!
The Headlands Center for the Arts’ Artists in Residence program received 862 applications this year for 40 residencies awarded.
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or 1:21.5, or 4.6%
See all Art Competition Odds.
Frieze Foundation’s EMDASH Award received over 750 applications this year for 1 award.
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or 1:750, or 0.1%
See all Art Competition Odds.
Artists have to establish their own criteria for discerning valid art competitions from rip-offs. When are the odds are too high? The fee exorbitant? The opportunity measly? We all have different tolerances.
I recently came across a residency that made me question the value of its opportunity. The winning artist receives a free, work-only studio for 8 weeks, with a materials budget of up to $800 depending on the project scope. The organization does not assist out-of-town artists with finding living accommodations. No other funding is included. This means that the artist is responsible for travel, housing, and a per diem, not to speak of an artist’s fee.
Yet the organization expects the artist to:
1. “Produce a new project that explores the history, architecture, aesthetics, or culture of the building site and surrounding community”…
2. … That results in “a public product at the end of the residency period.”
3. Post regularly on a blog.
4. Give one public lecture.
5. Avail themselves for for studio visits.
6. Provide high quality documentation of all work.
These are all things I’d aspire to do at each residency, but written expectations are paramount to requiring artists to do all these things, and that is different. Not everyone is comfortable speaking publicly (due to shyness, but also because of different language and speech abilities), familiar with blogging, or even equipped to submit documentation. Even if artists were willing and able, items 2 to 6 are distractions from studio time. In changing opportunities to responsibilities, it puts too much burden on the artist.
Consider it this way: What is the cash value of the residency?
The studio is 240 sq ft. That’s not huge. If you calculated the cost of studio rent at $1.75 per sq. ft; that’s $360/month, and $720 for two months. With up to $800 available for a materials stipend, that’s a $1,520 possible value.
How might the costs compare?
1. New project: An $800 materials fund could be easily exceeded for a new site-responsive project. Let’s assume the artist does not exceed the budget; the cost is $0.
2. Public program: Installing art for a public presentation takes additional labor and materials.
The Canadian Artists Representation Copyright Collective recommends a variable fee schedule which would net the artist, at minimum, $40 to $50/hour for exhibition preparation and installation. In addition, CARCC suggests an artist’s fee of $1,441 for a solo project exhibition at a small institution. Even if the project were considered a single work, the recommended fee would be $351.
But that’s in Canada, you say. Well, if an American artist calculated his/her time at $25/hours (a very modest freelance rate when you calculate health care and income tax), and we estimated the installation goes quickly in 4 hours and strikes in 4 hours, and that the organization supplies all the materials, the outlay in labor is $200.
3. Blogging: Say 2 hours/week x 8 weeks = 16 hours. At the modest rate of $25/hour, the value would be $400.
4. Lecturing: Guest artists usually receive at least $100 for artists’ talks for college classes. The prep and contact time would easily take 3-4 hours.
5. Studio visits: Guests artists are also usually compensated for doing studio visits too. Let’s ballpark this at $100. Again, most artists enjoy speaking with likeminded peers, but mandating an action is not necessarily the best way to achieve the desired result.
6. Provide high-quality documentation: Photographers regularly charge $50-100/hour for their services. Of course artists should document their own work, but again, requiring it means he/she must carry or rent photographic equipment, finish work on an advanced schedule, spend time lighting work for documentation, and conduct post-production on the images. This could easily take 8 hours, or in a modest estimation, $400.
These tasks alone tally up to $1,200. That’s $320 short of the possible value, until you consider the additional out-of-pocket expenses for the artist:
This could be a really fantastic opportunity for the right artist. (Though, in my informal survey of art competition odds, single-award opportunities like this present the worst odds for entrants.) To me, it looks like the costs implied by the expectations do not outweigh the few benefits.
Last weekend, I enjoyed the rare honor of speaking publicly about my work twice in the same day.
First, I delivered a guest artist’s talk to a graduate seminar in San Francisco via Skype (a first for me). Emphasizing the vicissitudes of my life in the arts, I shared a factoid I learned from Creative Capital’s Professional Development workshop. I hope I remembered it correctly:
One positive response for every 13 to 15 applications for grants, residencies and awards is a pretty good average.
(Artists: It’s Spring deadline season. How are your applications coming along? Listings here.)
Being an artist can be variously trivial, serendipitous, laborious, or intentional. So I might have over-explained my art for these students, but it seems a worthy risk if it counter-balances, at least a bit, the obfuscation and unspoken rules about engaging the art world as an emerging artist.
While I wanted to convey the principle, nothing free—paying dues and investing sweat equity—I came away marveling at my good fortune to have benefitted from so many supportive organizations, foundations, and individuals… such as people who dream big, put in work, show up, share, and ask good questions—like the seminar students. The end of the Q&A came too soon.
Then, I participated in a group artists’ talk alongside other artists in Voices of Home at Jenkins Johnson Gallery. Independent curator Kalia Brooks did a great job moderating the panel, which included wave-splashing painting teachers and self-effacing younger artists. The artists have varied practices, terrain enough for an engaging discussion.
The audience, which exceeded the gallery’s seating capacity, was really great; thanks to everyone who attended.
The talk was organized in recognition of Black History Month, so with a panel of all (but one) Black artists, the subject of race and representation in the art field came up for discussion.
For emerging artists in San Francisco, New York City might still be seen as an art world center, with the center-of-the-center being Chelsea. For a panel of largely Black artists, speaking to a largely African American audience in a commercial gallery in Chelsea, geography was a non-issue, but access, via the lens of identity, was still a concern.
Some of the artists rejected the idea that they ought contend with identity in the studio, but no one disavowed as much when it came to engaging the professional field and the public realm.
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Have you fantasized about de-activating your Facebook account? Me, too. Paul Martin’s definition of addiction—desire without pleasure—has characterized my recent experiences.
The headline,
“The Anti-Social Network: By helping other people look happy, Facebook is making us sad,”
of Libby Copeland’s article on Slate last year provides a clue to the problem.
Here is some irony about positive sentiments: I tried to keep my status updates positive, but willfully-upbeat presentations may actually be annoying, and en masse, distressing. I don’t think this undermines the value of optimism and positive enthusiasm in general, but speaks to Facebook’s perniciousness as a substitute for interaction and companionship.
So I’m taking a Facebook hiatus. It’s been four days, though it seems longer than that. Congratulations to me, I know. <Hallelujah hands.> [Sarcastic, I know. But I ought to share my un-Photoshopped sentiments, too, apparently. You have to start somewhere, buddies.]
—
One more fun fact, by way of Ritter Sport chocolates:
What Germans call “Halbbitter” (literally, “Half bitter”) is the same as what Americans call “semi-sweet.”
The half-full, half-empty optimism/pessimism riddle just got a chocolate-y analogue.
R+D 