Indianapolis Art Center – Blog

What is the Student Show?

The Art Center does its annual Student Show to give students the chance to experience what it’s like to enter and compete in a juried art exhibition. My experience in entering juried shows is it really is a rush when you get in. It’s just the greatest thing ever as an artist to have someone you really don’t know privately select your work to include it in a show among your peers. And there’s nothing worse than not getting into a show.

What does “jurying” really mean?

A juried show is a judged show. The (student) shows do vary greatly year to year and that’s because we change the jurors. A juried show simply means you’re bringing in one or two, sometimes more, outside art professionals whether they’re artists or art administrators. They’re going to come in and they’re the ones who pick the show. They go through the work and select what makes it in and what doesn’t. It’s an honor to be asked to be a juror. Jurors are really very respectful to the work. It’s a very calm, collected process; they’re going around and looking at these pieces. Having juried shows, I know it’s a huge responsibility and it’s not something you just walk into and say ‘oh, it’s in. It’s out.’ It takes hours and hours of time, especially when you have to work with someone else. I want each of our students to know that if you do enter our student show, you’re getting full consideration.When you’re in a juried show, it’s not just the jurors. It’s also the body of work you’re being juried against. Whereas your piece might not make it into one show, it might win best of show in another body of work because it stands out; it’s the only glass piece. Whereas you competed against 20 glass pieces in the last show. Oftentimes, even the same juror that rejects a particular piece in one show has picked that same piece in a different show to be best of show. I’ve had shows where I’ve entered, I’ve gotten in, I get the postcard and my print’s on the postcard. And that’s like, wow, a double bonus! And then the next year, you go in all confident and it’s those three No checkmarks. 

Why should I enter the Student Show?

A lot of people compete for the prize money. A lot of people compete for the solo exhibition that’s given to the Best of Show winner or the group show for the Divisional winners. I’m sure that every person you ask is going to have a slightly different reason for entering. I would say, ‘why not?!’ It’s a competition. It’s totally subjective. If your work isn’t accepted, it doesn’t mean it’s time to throw away the paintbrushes and move on. It just means that in that year, against that body of work, the jurors did not select your piece.  

How do I prepare for a juried show?

What you’ll find is that in each juried show, you’ll read the prospectus and you have to go down and find out if your work is eligible. Sometimes it’ll be ‘this media is and this media isn’t.’ In our student show, since we focus on so many different kinds of art in our 11 different studios, we allow it all to be entered.

What are the requirements for entering the Student Show?

It is the “Student” show. In order to participate, we do require that you are a member. That’s fairly common among juried shows. And the reason is, it’s because it’s a benefit of membership. All of the money it costs to enter comes back in terms of prize money. And so we want it to be our own pool of people. You’re not competing against all of the painters in Indianapolis; you’re not competing against all the ceramicists in Indiana or Ohio or the nation. It is our own home team. This is our home turf and that’s who you’re playing with. So you have to be a member.

You also have to have taken a class here in the last two years. Because we want you to know us.

We want the work to not be any older than two years old because we want it to be fresh. We want it to be what you’re working on now.

What are my odds of being selected for the show?

The more people who compete, the fresher the show because if the same people compete every year, all of a sudden the student show starts to look the same. So what we’re hoping for is for a really diverse pool of people to enter. Usually we have around 120 people enter which generally works out to be about 400 pieces to be juried. With those numbers, you have about a one in four chance, sometimes one in three. Last year (2011), it was more like one in three and a half chance of getting into the show.

We explain to (the jurors) that it doesn’t have to be a balanced show. We usually give them a low number and a high number of how many pieces we think we can accommodate. It’s always a little different each year because the size is different and we really want (the jurors) to be able to pick, but if it’s too little work, it’s not going to fill the galleries. If it’s too much work, it’ll be impossible to look at the show. So we give them a range, usually between 100 and 120 pieces. Some years we’ve increased that range, but we try to give everyone a pretty good chance of getting in. This year (2012), I think we’re going to set the low end at 100 and the high end at 140.

We tell (the jurors) that they need to look at each category and pick at least something from each one, but it’s not like it has to be the same amount from each category, like it has to be 30 beginners, 30 intermediate, etc. We educate our jurors that we have these divisions because someone coming to the Art Center for the first time and it’s the first time they’ve thrown on the wheel, they’re not going to compete against someone going around to art fairs or comes to the Art Center with a master’s degree in ceramics and uses our studios to make their work.

It also has to do with the turnout. If there are 20 submissions in beginning and there are 280 in intermediate, you’re going to see more intermediate work (selected for the show). It’s not fair to say, ‘there are 20 people in beginning so we’ll put all 20 people in the show.’

(The jurors) do look at all the work, but we keep it (in separate categories of beginning, intermediate, advanced and professional). So although they do a walk-through to get an idea of what they’re looking at, they’re not looking at your painting or your photograph in beginning and thinking ‘I saw this amazing thing in Professional.’

Why have different jurors every year?

We do like to change our jurors. That doesn’t mean that if you jury a show, you might not come back some day and jury again. But what we like to is find someone who’s an artist and someone who’s an art administrator, educator or collector. It doesn’t always work out that way, but our thinking there is we want someone who’s really got their hands in it, whether it’s painting or blowing glass or making ceramics. And then we also want someone who understands it from an art educational or art administration point of view in that they look at a wide range of art all the time and know what’s going on outside of their own studio.

Why have two jurors?

The reason we have two jurors is because it’s so subjective, if you ask three different people to pick their favorite painting in a show, they’re all going to pick a different one. Maybe they’ll pick the same one, but by having two people, we’ve created dialogue. What usually happens is they’ll go through all the work, look at all of it, then they’ll say, ‘okay, we agree on all of these. And we definitely agree that we don’t want these.’ And then where the interesting thing happens is what do they do with what’s left. And that’s where the conversation is. And that’s when the dialogue really gets interesting because someone may see something in a piece that someone else hasn’t considered. Someone might have a technical expertise in a certain media that they can speak to how difficult something may be.  

Most of the time when you enter a juried show, you get your prospectus, you fill it out, you send in your images, and you usually fill out the jury decision card. Two months later, or a month later or whatever, you get your own, handwritten envelope back in the mail with your own hand-filled out decision card with three cold checkmarks. And sometimes there’s a Yes. Most of the time, there’re all No’s. It’s just cold. There’s no good way around it. There’s usually a letter in there, a form letter, saying ‘thank you for entering.’ As my mentor used to tell me, when you get a rejection letter, throw it away immediately; forget about it and move on. When you an acceptance letter, put it on the refrigerator like it’s your third grade project and you leave it up all year or until you get your next acceptance letter.

Because it is so subjective and we want the jurors to make the meaty decisions, they jury the show privately. But then there’s an hour and a half at the end where they go division by division spending about 15-20 minutes in each division where they speak to the decisions they made and you are allowed to ask questions. You’re not allowed to ask, ‘why didn’t you pick my piece?’ or ‘why did you pick their piece?’ But you are able to ask ‘what were you looking for in this category?’ or ‘what was different about how you judged beginning versus intermediate?’ What (the walk-through) doesn’t help is, if your piece wasn’t picked, it doesn’t make you feel better. But it might dispel some of the mystery around it. If you go to a few of them year after year you really start to see how different it is based on who the jurors are.

What is the cost to enter a juried show?

For Art from the Heartland and the Student Show it is $25 for two entries. For the Student Show, you can continue to pay $5 for each additional entry. For the Broad Ripple Art Fair, it’s a $35 entry fee and you get four images. All these jury fees are non-refundable and that is always the case (in any juried show you may enter). Most jurying fees are $20-25. So it’s not uncommon for artists to have to pick and choose which shows they’re going to enter because if you start to enter every juried show that comes up, you’re racking up hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars in entry fees.

The student show always breaks even. If there’s extra money, we’ll just put that aside for awards next year. The Student Show is in no way a fundraiser (for the Art Center).

How does the Student Show jurying compare with the Broad Ripple Art Fair jurying?

How the Broad Ripple Art Fair is juried, we have a panel of five jurors. These are selected from art professionals, artists—sometimes we try to put a couple Art Fair artists on there, a couple art administrators—a museum professional, someone like that, so they all bring that into the pot. There’s no discussion among the jurors (for this show). They are looking at projected images and they each have their own laptop on which they enter a score from 1 to 7. We ask them not to score 4 so they are forced to either like one a little bit or not like it a little bit. We go through these (images). It takes about 10 hours to do it. And then those scores are captured online and the artist committee goes through and tabulates to figure out where the cutoffs are in each category. It’s an open jury as a service we provide (to students). You’re welcome to come into the auditorium and watch. You’ll see the images projected. You’ll see how many we go through. There were 801 applicants last year times 4 images for each (3,204 images). You’ll hear a brief artist’s statement read for each person, e.g., I work in ceramics. This is what I do-type of thing. You’re not allowed to comment and we do keep you back a little way from the jurors. You’ll get a sense of how fast and how quickly those decisions have to be made, how competitive it is, and how much artwork is out there. We do it open so if you’re starting to sell your work and thinking about doing the Art Fair, but aren’t quite ready, you can see what you’d be competing against. We also do it because we want to prove to our artists that we look at each and every image and that we really do give everyone the same amount of time and the same amount of consideration.

To see/hear excerpts from Patrick’s interview, visit the Art Center’s YouTube channel. The video is 11 min. long, but there are chapter divisions marked by black if you need to skip through.