by Kara Laughlin

Nothing inspires more opinions, speculation, shock and outright indignation among craftspeople than discussion of who did or did not get into a given show. At times, it can seem like an artist’s work is not as important as the number of people who know it. Many show promoters and artists understand that the jury process is not black and white. It has many aspects, includes many personalities, and many shows run their jury sessions differently.

An absolute Must: Get Great Photos
Jurors and organizers unanimously agree that the best thing applicants can do to improve their chances of getting into a show is to invest in high-quality slides. To some artists, this can seem unfair. But artist and former juror David Bacharach is adamant about the importance of good slides, reasoning that you are likely competing with artists who appreciate this importance and will “spend $1,000, $1,500, $2,000 to get killer slides.”

Although great slides can increase your chances of winning over a jury, many artists believe that equally important are the pieces you select to show. Quilter Pamela Hill says that after the first time she juried for an American Craft Council (ACC) show, she changed the way she submitted slides. “It’s not just about individual pieces. The set has to have its own presence as well,” she says. “You could have five pieces of splendid work, but unless the entire set is coherent, they look like they have no connection to each other. The care and consideration you give to your work must carry over to your slides.”

Do Newcomers have a harder time getting in?
Jeweler Johanna Fisher invested in professional slides to apply to the ACC shows, but still was surprised when she was accepted at the summer show in Chicago. “I expected not to get in,” she says. “Usually it takes a while for a show to let a new person in. The community is tightly knit. The jurors in the ACC shows are elected from the exhibitors, so it’s kind of like a little club.”

JoAnn Brown, director of shows for the ACC for 10 years, says, “I’ve been in every jury room for every show, and I’ve never seen people so fair. I’ve watched them try very hard to look through bad slides to see the quality of the work they represent.”

Cary Hewitt, show director for Crafts at the Castle in Boston, Mass., thinks their system is one of the main reasons the show has gained a reputation for receptivity to new and innovative work. “We are looking for the absolute best … and we’re looking for very innovative work,” says Hewitt. “We ask artists, gallery owners and museum curators to sit on the jury. That way, each year the jury has a different perspective.”

Rita Greenfield, co-owner of Gallery 500 in Elkins Park, Pa., has sat on several ACC juries and on the jury for the Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show. She says she’s constantly on the lookout for something new and exciting. But, says Greenfield, “If you see the same person over and over again, and the work is good, you have to jury them in even if you’d like to see something new.”

the Importance of Good vs. Bad Slide sets
	Artist and former juror David Bacharach provided two sets of jury slides. One he considers a “bad” set, the other a “good” set. Here are his comments on the bad and good elements of each set: In this “bad” set, the slides on the top and bottom left are good, but they do not look like they are part of the same body of work. The slide in the top right position is underexposed, making it difficult to view. The bottom center slide is too dark. The bottom right slide is too dark at the bottom, and has distracting hot spots on the top. Overall, this group of slides does not “read” as a unified body of work, because of their different backgrounds and greatly varied styles of work. The individual slides are not easily understood, particularly the top right slide. Because of this, the set has no flow. Jurors may get stuck at this point, and not see the complete set.
	This “good” set, while not perfect, is better than the above set. The background of the bottom center slide, while different from the others, is neutral enough to not distract from the other slides. The bottoms of the bottom left and right slides are dark, but the image on each is still understandable. The five slides generally read as a group of work created by one person at a defined point in his career. The top left slide pulls the juror’s eye to it, immediately starting the viewing of the group at a fixed point when the slides appear on the screen. (Otherwise the juror may visually wander around the images, looking for a spot to begin.) The clean image and vertical nature of the top right slide guides the viewer’s eye down to the bottom three slides. The top left and bottom left slides are graphically strong, representative of the artist’s work, and will probably be the first and last images seen, and the ones remembered by the jurors when they do their scoring. The layout of the slides allows viewers to move from one to the other easily.

the blacklists
Another issue that dogs the jury process of just about every venue is the perceived threat of personal vendettas and unofficial blacklists. Artists are understandably tight-lipped about their suspicions that show organizers or committee members reject certain artists regardless of their scores. According to Heidi Austreng, program coordinator for the Smithsonian Craft Show in Washington, D.C., “The committee really has nothing to do with the jurying process.” Brown says that acceptances to ACC shows are strictly based on the numbers.

Still, many artists question how they can be accepted into one show and not another, or accepted for years in one show and then suddenly never accepted again. It’s perplexing no matter how much they understand the jury process.

Hector says she had a puzzling experience recently with the Ann Arbor Street Art Fair. In a year in which she was juried into what many artists consider to be the triple crown of craft shows, the Smithsonian Craft Show, American Craft Exposition in Evanston, Ill., and the Philadelphia Museum of Art Craft Show, she was juried out of the Ann Arbor show.

Bacharach figures that for any of the more exclusive shows, there are always going to be more qualified artists than spots for them. “The arithmetic says you can’t get in every year,” he says. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there were some noodling going on with the scores, but who can say? It’s when one person who gets into every single show except one, and they never get into that one. That’s where I have questions.”

Bacharach says he thinks that most of the time, reality is probably somewhere between the purely score-based process that most shows claim to use, and the vendetta-driven blacklisting that some artists fear. Bacharach, who has sat on juries at a number of regional and national craft shows, says it’s just a matter of math.
A typical panel of five jurors is likely to come to a point at which there are more artists with identical scores than spots for them. At this point, he thinks, show organizers may start making selections based on balance, salability and other considerations.

Hewitt confirms that at Crafts at the Castle, that last batch of people with identical scores gets chosen based on how they will balance out the show. “It’s very important to us that the artist be able to sell when they get here. We don’t want to have too many booths with the same look, or the same type of thing,” Hewitt explains.

Be Careful what you ask for
A rejection without any evidence or reason leaves many artists frustrated. When she is rejected from a show, Fisher wishes she could find out why, so she can improve her chances next time.

Some shows do provide feedback to their applicants. The Michigan Guild of Artists and Artisans sends remarks about quality and balance along with scores to their members to help them improve their submissions. But feedback, even when the volume of applicants doesn’t prohibit it, is not always received in the gentle, constructive manner that it’s intended. One year, several jurors for an ACC show approached Brown, saying that they were having difficulty scoring poorly photographed work. “I said, ‘OK, put a little check mark on the ballot if you think the quality of the slides caused you to give a lower score, and we’ll tell the artist,” says Brown. “We’ll never do that again. The calls we got. … People were so offended.”

A need for change
Many artists, however, see room for improvement in the world of juries. Pamela Hill, who is on the board for the National Association of Independent Artists, wants every jury to hear a description of the work they are looking at. “When it comes to the actual jurying, I think this is the biggest problem among shows right now,” says Hill.
She tells a story about a booth at one show where she saw work that she thought was made of stone until someone commented on the metal’s amazing patina. Hill explains, “I thought, I’m standing right here and I can’t tell what it is, and they think they can tell from a slide.”

Some artists would like to provide more than just a description with their slides. Fisher believes that shows like The Rosen Group’s Buyers Market of American Craft, which requests supporting materials such as price lists, brochures and résumés, give her more opportunity to prove her professionalism than five slides projected on a wall for 30 seconds.
Brown says the ACC’s present method of jurying by media rather than by show (they hold one jury session for the whole year) has helped to clear up some of the ambiguity that can come from seeing slides instead of the actual work. “Artists within the medium are more familiar with the effects that can be achieved by that medium,” says Brown.

But Hill would prefer that a jury include artists from outside a given medium; innovators won’t be limited by the field’s paradigm of what is and is not being done with the medium.

Kara Laughlin is a Urbana, Ill.-based freelance writer. She is also a studio assistant to rugmaker Meg Little of On the Spot handmade rugs.

Theodora Elston knows all too well what Hill is talking about. She feels that her embroidered pins should be judged by other fiber artists, but for most shows, she has to apply in jewelry. “My problem with it is, for the most part, it’s metalsmiths on the jury, and they work in gold, silver and stones. My work is 100 percent fiber with a pin back attached. I don’t understand jewelry techniques any more than they understand embroidery.” Elston points out that unlike other categories, jewelry is a category of function rather than media. “I have a real feeling from most jewelers of ‘what is this doing here?’”

Brown says it’s impossible to have a completely clean, perfect system, but the ACC tries to respond to issues as artists bring them up. In the case of non-precious jewelry, more of an effort is being made to balance the jury among precious and non-precious jewelers. “There will always be people who are disappointed,” says Brown. “But we serve a lot of people well, and the work we do is good for the craft community as a whole.”

It is true — no show can please everyone. But shows can enforce fair practices from their juries to their show floors. They can be honest in reporting their sales and attendance figures. And artists can continue developing a dialogue with show promoters about what they think is fair and unfair about their practices. Show promoters can listen and provide feedback, and make changes where possible. Still, not everyone will be happy with the jury system, but maybe a few more than are happy now.