Wednesday, November 2, 2022

Post 278: The Benefits of Volunteering

Getting Involved in Your Local Art Group

The benefits of joining your local art group are numerous and well, truly invaluable. You are joining, communicating and gaining experiences, growth, and making connections with other local fine artists and crafters - from professional to beginners - and sharing your love of art with and learning from them.

Front entrance of Open Space Arts at Stonebridge art gallery in Woodbridge, VA

Benefits of Joining an Art Group

Joining your local art group - which may go by various names, like society, guild, artisans, league, or council - is not just for when you retire, there are artists of every age within most. Some art groups include families while other groups have a minimum age of 18 and older. It most certainly is for artists of any age and dependent upon that groups by laws, so be sure and do the research.
Art groups can be localized, regional or national, and they can be specialized to specific mediums. Examples are American Watercolor Society, Colored Pencil Society of America, Oil Painters of America, National Watercolor Society and more.

Art Benefits Include:

Making a name for yourself close to home
Learn about upcoming art shows and exhibits, and Calls for Art
Be inspired, rejuvenated, and build camaraderie with other artists
Take part in art competitions
Potential workshops and/or class participation
Potential ability to display artwork in the art group's studio, gallery, shows, etc.
Attend various art exhibitions, museums - art "field trips"
Potential "Featured Artist" or "Artist of the Month" or voted "Best in Show"
Networking with people in your local art world
Build friendships
Show off, share, and teach what you know and do
Possibility to enter various art events as a group member with less expense than being a solo artist
The art group's promotion and social media, advertising and marketing for art events means exposure for you as well

The Make-up of the Art Group

Art groups are usually non-profit groups with options and fee structures around their membership opportunities - individuals might be students, adults, senior adults over 60, family units and/or sponsorship levels supporting the arts. Art groups charge an annual fee to join and typically take a percentage of sales. Their income goes toward group activities, office supplies, business and banking fees, art entry fees, scholarship funds and many other day-to-day business expenses, learning experiences and/or causes.
Typically, the group has a Board of Directors with a President, Vice President, Secretary, Treasurer as well as Committees with a Committee Chair (leader) including Social Media Chair, an Event, Publicity, Hospitality, and Programs Chair, and potentially more. Each of these positions are volunteer positions. Depending on the art group, there may also be an art space(s) that are "manned" on a volunteer basis as well.
The Board of Directors are usually voted on while that Committees are volunteer positions. Strong, knowledgeable leaders are needed to help the entire group - running the monthly meetings and the Board meetings. The various Directors and Committee Chairs will need to interact with the community in order to develop art opportunities for the art group to display and sell at.
As you can probably guess, volunteers as a "candidate" for the Board or as volunteering on Committees is an absolute MUST for any art group to function, and to function well.
Sample Duties of Executive Board

The Board positions can typically run for one or two years.

President: Chairs the Executive Board and presides at all meetings of the society. The President shall convene at least 6 Executive Board Meetings each year. Prepares agendas for all general membership meetings and Executive Board meetings: delegates responsibilities and assigns tasks to Executive Board members; monitors status and completion of those tasks, provides signature on legal documents; serves as liaison between public, other organizations, and the Society. Coordinates functions with other offices.
Vice President: Acts as the assistant to the President and fulfills the duties of the President in her/his absence. The Vice President acts as liaison with Committee Chairpersons, and with society members.

Secretary:Records minutes and attendees of executive Board Meetings, and general membership meetings. In addition, the Secretary takes care of correspondence as requested by the Board. The Secretary should maintain a current copy of the by-laws with any amendments noted and any special rules adopted by the organization.

Treasurer: The Treasurer shall receive all Society funds, deposit them in a Virginia bank and pay all bills out of this account. The Treasurer shall present a brief report at each meeting of the Society Revenues and Expenses. The Treasurer should assist in preparing for the Annual Budget. Among other duties are renewal of the yearly Corporation license, the Liability Insurance and the renewal of dues to Prince William Art Council. Maintains an inventory list and location of all Society property.
Member-at-Large: The Member-at-Large should be elected by the members to represent their interest at the Executive Board level.

Benefits of Volunteering

Volunteering your time for any great group or cause is an admirable quality that makes each of us feel good.
Meet other artists that you will learn from and engage with. You know artists are a creative bunch, so you will meet some highly motivated, creative people to bounce ideas off of and perhaps borrow ideas from.
Volunteering sure looks good on the resume, especially if you are out of work.
Working with other art volunteers in these art groups opens up some opportunities that you may not be able to do on your own and potentially be less expense. True, doing a solo art show means that your sales are your own, but after exhibition space fees, a tent, tables, display stands and all the work involved with setup and take down, being in an art group distributes the load and costs. Everyone pitches in to get the job done.
Learn more about the business of art.
Any artist needs to get out of the studio on occasion and turn the "starving artist" or "lonely artist" myth into a more active and social art life.
Most art groups have their own websites and social media sites which can provide ways to be seen and linked.
Getting asked to do a demo may offer benefits as well.
It's good for the soul - health benefits too!
And much more.
Individuals that decide to join an art group will need to drop the ego at the door. Encouraging each other, learning, growing, and helping inexperienced artists are on the to do list. It is not a competition. You are not joining to be an art critic nor be criticized. Being a prima donna isn't being part of the team and the art group needs to function as a team with everyone pulling duty in one way or another.

Each of us need to balance our own time between our families, our art and/or work, and volunteering with the art group(s) that we join.

With ALL of that being said, I personally look at it as everyone's duty to "spread the word" about your group, your team's art events and even when possible, a group member's links and accomplishments. It could be anything from sharing brochures at work and inviting friends and family to see the show to sharing events online to social media and your contact lists.
The Prince William Art Society has been an art group for 50 years BECAUSE artists have stepped up and volunteered to make it happen. Getting involved will help to continue this group and any group you become a member of.

For more information, here is a good article:
https://fineartviews.com/blog/23623/ten-reasons-for-the-emerging-artist-to-join-a-local-art-group

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Let me know if you like my paintings and if you need a handmade, original painting for yourself or as a gift for a friend or family member. If you want to commission me to do a painting for you, please contact me through this blog, on Facebook, My Website at https://DonnaLiguriaArt.com, or go to Donna Liguria Art on Etsy at https://www.etsy.com/shop/DonnaLiguriaArt to shop my available Artwork.

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Tuesday, November 1, 2022

Post 277: Artwork Rejection

Artwork Rejection

You've done the work. You created your artwork and submitted it to a juried art show or gallery in the hope of showing off your artwork to the masses. The wait begins to see if you get the thumbs up or the thumb down.

Out of Your Control vs In Your Control

(Warning: Please note that I'm not going to sugarcoat this article.)
There are some things within the artist's control when submitting artwork to a gallery for selection, but probably much more frustrating is that there are more things that ARE NOT within the artist's control. And even more confusing and/or frustrating, the reasons for rejection that are out of your control you may never know about.
At Open Space Arts (OSA) at Stonebridge, we use a "Jury Committee" which is a group of artists with a variety of art backgrounds that review all art submissions. While we cannot speak for every juried art show in the world, there are common features that are taken into consideration when populating a gallery for specific art shows.
Here are some things that the gallery has total control over:
1. To be blunt - your artwork may look great in person, but the image of it that the jury sees - well, sucks. Actually this happens a lot and the artist does have control over taking the photo of it. Do NOT include background in your art photos. Take a GREAT picture and CROP out the background. And quite frankly, because of techie things, the image may not translate well from image to projected when the jury is doing their thing.
2. How large the gallery space is vs. the number of pieces submitted, also vs the size of the pieces submitted. Say a gallery has room for 100 large pieces and they receive 350 pieces of large art to jury. Do the math, that's a lot of rejected art.
3. IF the gallery is looking for a theme and the artwork submitted doesn't fit that theme, it has to be cut. Although OSA doesn't want to necessarily stick to a theme for each art show, occasionally the title of the show does dictate a "theme". Say the show was "Summer Spotlight on Art" and artists submit art that has snow, ice, fall colors and the like. Although the art might be scrumptious, the time of year along with 'what might sell best at this show' would mean that these pieces may do better if submitted for a fall or winter seasonal show. Again, look at Number 2, something has to go.
4. Best of the best vs diversity. I can speak for OSA on this topic as we jury art for our shows, we strive for the BEST of the art submitted. We want the highest quality of art from Prince William County artists for every show we have juried. That takes precedence. We realize that some artists only do abstracts, some only do large works, some artists do photography, and others do realism. We compare an artist's submissions against other pieces that same artist submitted (often taking the best out of that artist's entries) as well as the entire shows submissions.
There are galleries that are all about featuring every style of visual art known to man, perhaps to appeal to the diversity of potential gallery visitors. And in essence, there is nothing wrong with that. Again, space over the number of pieces means cutting out some great art.
5. Although I am on the Jury Committee for OSA, I do like to think we are being fair in our selections. We vote on pieces and we do tend to try to be inclusive. We each have our own opinions about what we like and do not like in art and this is true for any jurist or jury committee at any gallery. I believe that a committee vote works better than a single person selecting work for a show. Our committee members are objective in their decisions, seeking the quality of the artwork submitted as our priority. A single jurist may or may not be as objective - I've seen it at some galleries as you probably have.

A Rejected Art Piece

I'm going to show you an example of one of the oddities in art jurying. This is a photograph of a piece I painted and recently submitted to the OSA Hispanic Heritage Art Celebration show that is now open from September 21 to October 16, 2022. This piece was rejected from the Call for Art.

Pinata by Donna Liguria, 2022 Acrylic on Canvas
Now, why I am showing you this, is that on Saturday, September 24, at the Occoquan Arts and Crafts Show, the Prince William Art Society (PWAS) had a tent up with 9 artist members displaying a diverse tent of art. This painting was the first piece that sold at the show. Funny but true and others have similar stories.

Art Crafts vs Fine Art

I do think that an understanding should be made here about the difference between fine art and craft art. See this article Difference Between Craft and Fine Art
At OSA, we have turned away craft art. It is also worth remembering that the OSA Committee, made up of Prince William Art Society members, needs to also work under the guidelines of our gallery sponsors - meaning that the artwork on display must be FINE ART of the best quality.

What is in the Artist's Control?

1. Follow the rules, the directions, the process. Proofread you submission BEFORE you submit it. You know the saying, "Dot your 'i's and cross your 't's"? When a gallery has A LOT of artists submitting hundreds of pieces of art, what is really unfortunate is when an artist DID NOT FOLLOW DIRECTIONS. Print out the directions so that it is easier for you to follow the checklist of things to do!
...I could stop this list at this point because that is simply where most mistakes happen...
With everything on the internet, on YouTube, on this blog or elsewhere, a simple search and doing your homework will help you understand the art business world and its expectations. It is a business and an artist wants to sell art as much as the gallery does. If a gallery has requirements, it is UP TO YOU TO MEET THOSE REQUIREMENTS. Otherwise, maybe a juried art show might not be what you should do if you can't take rejection.
If I come across as harsh on this, I'm not going to apologize. I've had artwork rejected too. It happens and it probably has to you too. Nonetheless, here are some areas where mistakes can and do happen when submitting art to galleries to be juried:
2. Bad photos.
3. Missing information.
4. Unfinished artwork. (This covers a lot of territory from under-drawing showing to unfinished edges.)
5. Badly framed or matted and framed artwork, or unprofessionally packaged art prints.
6. Improperly wired artwork. (We have received artwork with no way to hang it.)
7. Not original artwork. (Unless you are Walt Disney, don't submit Mickey Mouse art.)
8. Incomplete, unprofessional artist bio.
9. Submitting only one entry. (Could be a sort of an alert that you may be a beginner and you may be overlooked for a more aggressive entrant or perceived as larger body of work artist.)
10. Failure in not submitting your images in the requested format. Also note, if asked to ATTACH the image is different than EMBEDDING the artwork in the email. Often, although perhaps unknown to you, there are good reasons for specific requests. When dealing with hundreds (or more) pieces of art, each gallery has their own methods of doing things.
11. Failure to submit art on time, to deliver art on time or failure to respond to an email for more information on time.
12. Failure to not submit your best artwork.
13. Poorly constructed compositions, proportions, technical flaws. This is also known as not executed well. (We have seen artwork where the subject matter is quite good, but the piece's background is not. Or the human's hands are out of proportion to the rest of the portrait.)
14. The uniqueness of your art. How does your artwork stand out, what makes it so far superior to another landscape or similar subject matter?
15. Submitting the same pieces over and over again. (The expectation is that you are growing as an artist and have much more artwork to show.)
16. Your attitude in taking rejection is under your control. You can take it as a learning experience or you can always say, 'They hate my art. My art is no good. I hate this gallery." OR you could simply ask where you could improve.

Donna's Cave Paintings Blog - by Donna Liguria Art

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