It seems that everyone including the sanitation workers union has an award show.
I wonder why?
Because everyone loves awards. There’s that moment when your name gets called and you walk down the isle and they hand you that award and for that one second of time you are the head Magalia.
So why is it that art hasn’t caught on? The amount of money awarded for a win in any of the juried shows isn’t enough to cover the cost of the supplies you invested in getting it, not enough to cover the payment on your Mercedes, not even enough to p[ay for a top flight dinner for you and the Long Sufferin’ and a coupla friends.
You carefully add the latest triumph on the juried art scene to your resume, but beyond that there is no lasting proof that you ever did more than just type a line or two on a sheet of paper.
The sad part is in many of the unjuried shows, the award recipients receive a ribbon which is more than they would for walking away with top honors in one of the more prestigious shows. Why do we not give out awards?
And the awards themselves, they come from the local trophy shop without so much as a thought about what they should look like. And of course that is what they look like, something from the local trophy shop that someone picked up at the last minute.
If we are artists, honoring our own with recognition of their hard work why don’t they get the best we can offer? Where is the design, the creative spark, the passion expressed in a solid form, something that the artist can enjoy and pass on to their family as a cherished laurel?
You can’t do that with a small check and a handshake.
I just got the Call to Artist for Expressions West, which is ironic, I’m a photographer and don’t paint and am thus not eligible for Expressions West and with the Croaker hard on my heels I probably won’t be able to enter anything for a while anyway, but after looking at the prospectus I wondered how many former winners even remember when they won and for what?
If there was a special, artist designed award tailored exclusively for Expressions West wouldn’t the victory be even sweeter? Something which shouts I won this because on that day a jury of specially selected artists thought my work was the best.
That’s a win worth having and if in the process of doing this awarding and trophy designing and creative thinking the prize money has to be reduced or eliminated, would that be such a bad thing?
Years ago I learned a very valuable lesson. I was running a Murder Mystery Company traveling about doing show on location and as part of the event a fifty dollar cash prize was the carrot for solving the mystery. They also received a trophy, standard winged Nike-like nekkid lady, a Sleuthie. The not so correct folks got T-shirts and the really wrong got certificates of dishonorable mention. And after every show, the winners walked directly over to the T-shirt winners and offered their fifty dollars for that louse T-shirt even though the shirts could be bought in the lobby. It seems that being a part of the award was the ticket.
They never offered to trade the cheap plastic trophy, oh no, they won that and by God that was going up on the mantle right next to the Good Citizenship medal from Harper’s Ferry Middle School and the track second prize way back in the misty days of college. It was an award and there’s no way it was going anywhere but home.
Maybe artists are too lofty, too aesthetic, too artistic to care about something so banal. Maybe…
No comments:
Post a Comment