WHAT DOES THAT MEAN

Every now and then there’s a prospectus which says exactly what it means, West Coast Wings or 17th Annual Maritime Show. Okay, even West Coast Wings can be open to interpretation.

The problem for an artist looking for a place to display their work is how do you determine what that darned prospectus means. Now if you are content to just display your work, Josie’s On Broadway or Oregon Bay Properties will do that job for you at no cost. Just bring your pictures in and let them tell your story to the world.

But if you crave the validation a juried show can bring then you will have to work your way through that prospectus.

“There’s nothing mysterious about a prospectus,” you say. “Just read the form and you will know all you need to select your picture.” Right, if that were true we’d all be placing first and have so much money in show winnings that we’d have to actually find that fourteen hundred square foot house with the ten thousand square foot gallery attached. Even when the prospectus is written by human beings with the best interests of the artists in the forefront it can be a mystery worthy of the little gray cells of Poirot.

“Nonsense,” you say. Okay, riddle me this Batman, just what does Expressions West mean? Is it an insight into the western movement of the nineteenth century or the creative energy of the artists living in the western half of the United States? Could it be the expression on a face or the expressions made by the viewer when they see what an artist has chosen to create? Could it be a visual interpretation of a verbal expression, or the expression of color in the vast, raw space of the west? It could be all of these things.

So how do you decide what a prospectus like this means?

I don’t know. Until or unless the sponsor of the show decides to include detailed guidelines spelling out just what they are seeking, it’s a crap shoot, but having said that an artist owes it to their craft to take the widest possible view of the prospectus. Submit anything you have which might be by any stretch of the imagination a fit for the show. Who loses if you don’t? Only you, the jury will reject anything that doesn’t fit within their image of what the prospectus wants, why not make them earn their keep? Submit and see if it is a fit.

Validation is hard to come by for a creative person, we work alone, in the isolation of our studio, just a head full of ideas and some materials to force the spark from years of solid ivory. If the work could fit, then it is the artist’s duty to take just a small step to get that validation. And if not, then there’s the next prospectus.

Oh yes, West Coast Wings, sounds solid and secure doesn’t it? So how about those migratory dragons? I hear there are Native American Thunderbirds nesting just up the Coquille River. But I’m sure no one would take the prospectus this far…would they?