Decisions, Decisions

by Beth E. Wilson, February 23, 2007

Years ago, when I first moved to New York City, I had a persistent fantasy. In my mind’s eye, I would be walking along some Midtown street, when a tinted-window limousine would glide alongside me at the curb. The window would roll down, and the limo’s wealthy, well-connected owner (who of course had immediately recognized my innate intelligence and worth), would invite me in, whisking me away to the destiny I deserved.

I (mostly) got over this fantasy some time ago. But I did find myself in something like the position of that nameless millionaire recently, when I spent the better part of two days sifting through an enormous stack of applications sent in by artists to “Beyond Self: Contemporary Explorations in Art & Spirit,” this year’s edition of SUNY Ulster’s annual juried exhibition. The theme called for art that uses spirituality as a way for artists to look “beyond themselves” and the material world, “to make new connections.” My selections would be—at least on a microcosmic scale—a recognition of the value of the work done by the artists included, though, in all due modesty, I have to admit I doubt appearing in this one show will make anyone an art star overnight.

Poring over these submissions with me was the pioneering performance artist (and Saugerties native) Linda Montano. It was lots more fun to share the load—I can’t imagine being confronted with such a monumental stack of slides and CDs and grimly making sense of it all by myself, not to mention the fact that Linda’s deep spiritual insight and sense of humor was enormously helpful in keeping our focus as we enjoyed the process at the same time.

In the few weeks since the results of our deliberations went out, I’ve had some interesting conversations with a number of artists (both in and out of the show), confirming a suspicion I had had all along—that the jury process, cloaked in secrecy, can provoke a tremendous amount of anxiety among artists, who are left wondering, “Why didn’t I get in?” or, “How did they pick that one, out of all my slides?”

In the interest of demystifying the jury process, and to offer some guidance to those of you who may find yourselves submitting work to such a process in the future, following are a few things you might want to think about as you put your package together.

Does your work really have anything to do with the announced theme or concept of the exhibition?

Amazingly, probably the number one reason we rejected artists or works from the SUNY Ulster exhibition was the fact that it seemed to have little or nothing to do with the theme of spirituality as it was announced in the call. Of course, we were open to many, many different expressions of spirituality—there are things in the show that spring from Catholic, pagan, Buddhist, and plenty of other traditions—yet there were still an unbelievably high number of submissions for which it was nearly impossible to see the connection. Instead of “Beyond Self,” such packets smelled more like pure “Self-Promotion,” as though the jurors shouldn’t care so much about the idea as about the fact that brilliant artist X has elected to grace us with his or her presence.

Compounding this fatal error, there were several people who submitted bodies of work that I know they had been kicking around for some time, and sometimes had even exhibited locally already. Is it really necessary to send the same things to every open call, again and again? It made me wonder whether those artists were actually interested in engaging spirituality—or even in making new work at all.