Hung Jury

We don't spend nearly enough time being grateful for our jurors. If you are on trail for murder and the jury brings in a not guilty vote then you're grateful, but what if it is a lesser crime, like...oh...I don't know...like submitting art to a juried show.

Do you ever stop to think about what the jury for a show goes through?

First and foremost they have the nasty job of suspending subjective taste and trying to find an objective answer to an inherently subjective question, “What is best?”

I can't answer that question. I know what is best for me and it is pretty exclusive. I know when I suck and that is a lot more often than I'd like. I know when in one of those rare moments I hit it out of the park. There's a spark, a something that says this is the one. But what I don't know is “What is best?”

That is the question every jury is trying to answer. And if you think it should be easy try doing it. I did and it ain't easy.

An old pal asked if I'd jury a student art show. (You know to start sweating anytime an old pal asks you a question dontcha?) I said sure and to myself I snickered, “They're kids, how hard can it be to sort through the kitties and the cows and find something that's okay?”

So in my innocence I said, “Sure.” Then the art started pouring in and it wasn't good student art, it wasn't good art, it wasn't even great art, it was fantastic, in every color of the rainbow, every technique and every discipline. Just great!




Just great, this was a lot more than I signed up for, I was actually going to have to think. Rats!

So I started the work of going through it. I did a round of sorting out the best and got nowhere. I started over and still got nowhere. There was too much in the good category. I started over.

This time through I took out the things I could honestly describe as bad. There's always some, no matter how you do it some bad art works its way into every show. Okay so that took out a few. Then how to make the next cut. (Maybe those guys on American Idol aren't so silly.)

I worked very hard at not giving in to my own preferences, I am a photographer so photography has a natural pull for me, but you shouldn't let that influence you, if you can.

Took the better part of a four day weekend to cut the show to a set of three, and although I am satisfied I did the best I could, I might not do it that way if I had to start over. Fortunately for me there are other jurors who get a vote and the final is based on all of our work, thank God.

So the next time you get selected out of a show and curl your lip and snarl, “That *&^%$ judge screwed me!” Think again. That judge gave it his best shot at a process that can't be done, not here, not now, not anywhere.

Oh yes, take a look at what I did and see if you think I did the job.