Why Didn’t You?

Why didn’t you enter the CAM Biennial? It’s a show without a jury. If you come they will build it, or at least hang it on the walls.

Why haven’t you been entering those shows which have come like rain in Oregon winter?

I’m not competitive. I don’t think art can be judged. I don’t want someone not even an artist judging my work.

You must have a full closet or is that why you park the car in the drive? Art hiding in a closet or rotting away in a drafty, damp, fume-filled garage is art wasted.

Let’s get the big one out of the way, nobody likes to be rejected. There I’ve said it and it is without a doubt true. If you think death and taxes are sure bets try watching any high school sporting event. No silly not the game, but the drama in the stands. There has been more bloodshed in the stands at a high school football game than in all of the wars fought since the dawn of time. Just try getting shot down in front of all of your friends on a Friday night and see if you can make it out of the stands without doing a double gainer off the bleachers. The rush of blood to the face is likely to cause you to pass out and then there you are lying on the edge of the field like a gold fish on the bathroom floor except there’s a nasty news crew filming the game but now they are filming you…

You get the picture, rejection is hard. But keep this in mind it has as much to do with who you are and what you are as those long forgotten high school romances. And I know you lived through that.

No one likes having their work judged. That’s true. Especially when you don’t know the jury, (Maybe you do know the jury and they like only things done in pink magic marker and you work in oil…), maybe the jury intimidates you, maybe you just want to run and hide.

Let’s go back to high school shall we? Somehow you managed to work up the courage to try again, you know after that horrible night when Pammie walked away with Harry the Hunk while you lay on the side line with an EMT blowing air down your throat and all of it being captured on the Jumbotron? You did try again, ‘cause otherwise you’d be a hermit coach living in the wilds of Afghanistan and not here in Coos County trying to get some thick-headed judge to pick your painting/sculpture/pot/wood carving/collage or finger paint? So you can not only live through it but you can try again.

Remember the jury’s selection says a lot more about the jury than it does about you. That’s right, they’re telling everyone “I only like pink magic marker art so there!”

Are you going to be kept from entering by someone who collects pink magic maker art? Why not cower at Elvis on velvet aficionados or tremble at tongue depressor sculptures? You can’t let the jury keep you from entering. What do they know? (Okay so occasionally someone gets it right and packs the jury with every known bird genius and gets my bird pictures bounced out of the Sage Gallery West Coast Wings show but that won’t happen often and you can always say they were so narrow they didn’t want to understand conceptual bird seed creations as art, and that’s the truth).

That’s the real answer, what do they know? You’re the only one who knows if you got it right. They can agree or disagree but you are still the only one who knows.

There’s a new year coming, they do that about this time and with it will come more opportunities for entering your work. Will you do it? Or will you let the forces of pink magic marker art keep you on the sidelines?