Jurying an exhibition
Friends of the Yellow Barn Studio
I was honoured to jury the Friends of the Yellow Barn Studio 28 Annual Members Show which opens today in Glen Echo Park, Maryland. Founded by artist, Walter Bartman, the studio has been a thriving teaching and exhibition centre since 1994. I’ve always loved Walt’s work, so when he asked if I’d like to jury this event, I was happy to accept.
There were more than 150 submissions in oil, acrylic, pastel, watercolour, gouache, charcoal, coloured pencil, and mixed media. My mandate was to choose what I considered to be the 80 strongest works for inclusion in the show as well as to pick the top 3 works and 5 honourable mentions.
I sweated over this! Every work entered is someone’s best effort and has a lot of heart and hope attached to it. And, having had work rejected for shows in the past, I know how demoralizing it can be. So I examined the entries many times over several days, trying to understand the individual intention and merit of each one.
When I looked at each work, I was evaluating it for a number of things:
skilled use of the medium
clarity of concept
surprise
I love it when an artist surprises me. My eyes have seen so many paintings and drawings over the years and, when I see something that I haven’t encountered in quite that way before, I get a little thrill. It may be an entirely original-feeling painting, or it might be a portion: an unexpected use of colour, texture, or line, an omission or unexpected addition. Sometimes I can’t pinpoint what’s causing the thrill but I know that a piece makes me think or feel something when I look at it. I interact with it rather than just see it as marks on canvas or paper. When a piece opens a line of communication it’s a magical thing.
It’s also a subjective thing. My brain brings a library of “work that I love” to every new work that I see and my job as a juror is to recognize that and override it; to see the merit in styles and genres that I don’t normally focus on. I hope I managed to do that but I’m very aware that another juror would make a few different choices based on their own artistic history.
I tried to create a balanced show that has representation of many mediums and many genres from abstraction to hyper realism.
If you’d like to see what I picked and hear why, Walt and I discussed the selections in this Youtube video. It might give you some insights into the jurying process.
Happy painting!