The Jury Is In

They question how the process is orchestrated, how it differs for different shows, and if it is the best possible way to ensure the highest-quality crafts for exhibition.

To help bridge the information gap between juries and craftspeople, we queried artists throughout the country to find out what questions they would most like to ask a juror, and found three experienced jurors to respond.

Q: When choosing slides for groupings (for simultaneous presentation to jurors), is there a way that an artist can organize them to his/her best advantage?

-- Dale Helms, Dale Helms Fine Furniture, Shelburne, Vt.

Michael Banner: When choosing slides for simultaneous presentation to jurors, the artists can organize them to their best advantage by arranging them so that each projected group of two or three is displayed vertically or horizontally and with similar backgrounds.

Leslie Ferrin: The best thing an artist can do is to find out in advance from the show sponsor if there is a format that the slides are shown in such as two on top, three below, or five in a row, etc. Once that is known, an artist can organize the slides to best present their work. Projecting slides in advance exactly like the jurors will see them can be quite illuminating for an artist. Getting a bunch of artists together with five projectors can help everyone make a better presentation. Also, find out if it is a "blind" jury or if additional informational materials would help your presentation.

Josh Simpson: It is incredibly important to organize them. Remember that in exchange for $25, the jury will only see them for a second or two. Stop looking at them individually -- visualize the group as a composition that follows all the standard art rules we've learned. Make sure jurors pay attention to your work by making your strongest or brightest slide the center of interest. You may have shadows or color or the form of an object in one slide that will naturally draw one's eye to the next slide, and so on. For me, squinting at the group or looking at them upside-down helps me figure out the order in which I send them off to the jury.

Q: Is there anything that jurors find to be automatic turnoffs, or instantaneous reasons for rejection?

-- Dale Helms

Michael Banner: No. I try to be positive about the work while trying to see through the bad photography, faded slides or textured backgrounds.

Leslie Ferrin: Not if (the jurors) are able to focus on the work instead of the slide itself. Super-slick or amateurish presentations can influence or distract from viewing the work.

Josh Simpson: I was setting up for a craft fair once, many years ago, and my assistant was putting on his show clothes in the back of my booth, while I was taking pictures of the booth from the front. He mooned me out the front of the booth as I snapped the picture. There had been two craft fairs that I had applied to for 15 years in a row and never gotten in ... This slide of Jay mooning me was so great that I just put it in the middle of my slide set. You can absolutely never guess the mood or dynamics of a particular jury. Slides that are witty or cute, stupid or gross, might guarantee acceptance with one group and fail miserably with another. Having Jay moon this particular jury didn't help me a bit. If you care about the craft fair, it's better not to take risks.

Another story, with opposite results, occurred when I used to make wine goblets, and while photographing a set of six, I bumped into and smashed two of them. I went ahead and took the photo of the four goblets along with the broken ones. For a long time, the next several years really, I got comments from jurors about that "dramatic" slide with the shattered pieces. So that was a slightly risky move, but it happened to turn out OK.

Q: Especially for jurors who jury jewelry: I have exhibited at high-end shows that proclaimed to only admit craft that was made by hand in the United states. Yet I have seen imports at these shows. How do imports and buy-sell items get past some juries?

-- Mary Winstead, Ann Allen Jewelry, Gulfport, Fla.

Michael Banner: The jurors may not have experience with what is available commercially. Jurors should be familiar with the advertising in commercial (jewelry) trade publications.

Leslie Ferrin: The jury is not always fully aware of the means of production, especially if all we see are slides. I think it is the responsibility of the show promoter to make the rules clear to the applicants and enforce them. The jury is only judging slides, not business practices or production locations.

Josh Simpson: Either the jurors had no idea what they were looking at, or the slides were of something other than what that person brought to the show.

Q: What is your opinion about background requirements for jurors of craft shows? Do you feel the juror should have direct knowledge and experience in craft?

-- Ann Allen, Ann Allen Jewelry, Gulfport, Fla.

Michael Banner: My opinion about the background requirements for jurors of craft shows is that the jurors should have many years of experience in the field of crafts, not fine art exclusively. I do feel that the majority of jurors on a jury panel should be craftspeople.

Leslie Ferrin: As a former artist, I do have direct knowledge in ceramics, although in the past tense at this point. However, I think that gallery owners and curators have more natural experience in jurying than artists. They spend much more time reviewing work, sometimes in many different media, in presenting selections of work to the public (which is what a show is) and knowing the scope and variety of the field. Artists tend to know their own media quite well but not necessarily much about other media. Also, they may know a lot about artists in their particular marketing segment of the field but not necessarily lower- or higher-end artists.

I think a jury should contain a balance between peers and other members of the craft community to keep things as open and diverse as possible.

Josh Simpson: Bottom line, all you need is a live human who has an opinion and can put a mark on a piece of paper. Lord knows there are enough art critics who don't know a thing about craft, but because they have an opinion and are willing to share it, they get heard.

There is another whole set of people, though, who say that any juror coming from the craft field will just reinforce the status quo -- vote for things they've seen in the past -- and aren't as open to new and different things. I've seen all kinds of folks on juries. To me, ideally, a juror should have some experience in the craft field.

Q: How do you feel about having non-artists on juries?

-- Steven Spiro, Hillpoint, Wis.

Michael Banner: Craftspeople should be the majority of the jury, and the balance, if non-artists, should be people who are intimately familiar with crafts.

Leslie Ferrin:See answer to previous question.

Josh Simpson: I think it's OK not to have artists on the jury, but it depends on the show. Some shows have retailers on the jury, and the common wisdom is that they will favor work that will sell well. Retailer-jurors are not appropriate for every show or exhibition.

Q: How certain are you that the decisions you make as a part of the jury are final and are not affected by the show organizers?

-- Steven Spiro

Michael Banner: I am not sure if the jurors' decisions are final, as there may be several people with the same score for only one slot in the show. Who selects? Ideally, a tie score would be returned to the jury for the final decision.

Leslie Ferrin: I think that most shows use some secondary level of selection once they have the jurors' scores. Most shows have a specific idea about how many artists in a certain media they want; they like to have a balance to please the public. Also, "seniority" comes into play in some shows. I have never been on a jury where these issues were decided with the jury. Wait lists certainly have an arbitrariness in how they are set up and how they are used.

Josh Simpson: I know for certain that there have been acceptance changes made by craft show organizers that are contrary to the jurors' decisions -- I know it has happened.

Q: Do you find it difficult to keep your personal preferences out of the process?

-- Christine Colombarini, Dowelltown, Tenn.

Michael Banner: I do not find it difficult to keep my personal preferences out of the process. It is very important to me to keep an open mind.

Leslie Ferrin: I think we are hired as jurors because we have personal preferences. We are being asked to use our experiences to make judgments. However, I try to vote on originality and technical proficiency even if the work is not my design taste.

Josh Simpson: It's impossible to keep my personal preferences out of the process.

Q: Regarding the committee guidelines that are set up for each show's jurors and jurying process -- what would a juror like to see in those guidelines that would make their jobs easier, more effective?

-- Louis Colombarini, Dowelltown, Tenn.

Michael Banner: The jurying process is more effective when each media is juried separately. Show all of the individual media first with the opportunity to ask technical questions of other jurors who are experts in their field. The jury would then score on the second showing.

Craftspeople's names can help to guard against look-alikes or imitations.

Leslie Ferrin: I think the jury process could be improved by:

• being honest and ethical to start with. Jurors' scores should be private -- jurors should not be able to influence each other by knowing how others vote.
  

• The show should set clear guidelines for what they wish the jury to accomplish, i.e., how do they want the show to be balanced in media, price range, functional vs. non-functional, emerging artists vs. veterans etc.? A system should be in place for the jury to make those choices to balance the show, not leaving that up to "chance" or promoter preferences.
  

• If the jury is not a "blind" process, all artists should provide similar informational material; jurors should not have to provide artist background information for one another.
  

• Jury results are only as good as the juries that score them; qualified jurors who are balanced between those who produce and those who present art.

Josh Simpson: I think that simply reading the guidelines to the group of jurors when they get together is the best way to ensure that all the jurors at least know what the guidelines are.

But different shows have different ideas of what they want to present, so I'm not sure it would be effective to have a standard guideline for jurors. The best guidelines are very simple: "Vote for objects with quality and integrity."

Q: What suggestions can you offer from an insider's perspective on adapting the jury process to ensure the fairest selection and balance of artists possible?

-- Anonymous

Michael Banner: Jurors' selections should be final. The jury should not be smaller than five jurors and not larger than seven. Jurors should be fairly compensated to get the best qualified people.

Leslie Ferrin:See answer to previous question.

Josh Simpson: There is no fair way to do this -- somebody always [feels victimized]. The nature of the process is unfair. None of us can be presented in our best light in five slides, any more than we could be judged in life by our scores on the SAT. Sometimes I think a lottery would work just as well.

On different juries, I've made a point -- when all the jurors have a piece of paper with 80 numbers on it, corresponding to 80 sets of slides on the carousel -- to ask randomly, without even knowing whose work we've looked at that corresponds to that number, what score they gave number 21, for example. In a group of five to 10 jurors, you get a range from the absolute highest to absolute lowest score; what I think is fantastic work, the person sitting right next to me might give the lowest score. This leads me to think that the jury process only yields mediocre work, that we automatically discourage people who are really good or really bad, and only choose the stuff that's in the middle. Doing the lottery would probably do the same thing.

Noelle Backer is The Crafts Report's associate editor.