In March, I await the news that will determine my year.
To understand March, we need to go back to January. At the beginning of each year, I spend a couple of weeks swimming in applications and planning my schedule through October. Most art fair applications are due by February. There’s a bit a pressure in having to plan the whole year all at once. If I miss something in those couple of weeks, I’ve missed it for the year. There’s a show that I’ve missed two years in a row because the deadline has already passed by the time I start planning.
Each application consists of 3 or 4 images of an artist’s work and an image of their display. Along with that goes an application fee, ranging from $20 to $40. I applied to about forty shows this year, so the fees add up. The applications then get reviewed by a jury that decides who gets to exhibit and who doesn’t. Some of the fairs will have a thousand applicants competing for one hundred spaces. Actually, not even one hundred spaces, because some of the artists from the previous year get invited back. If you’re one of the lucky ones that make it past the jury, there’s a booth fee that ranges from $200 to as high as $2000.
After the applications have been sent, it’s up to fate or something. You hope the jurors aren’t too bleary eyed after viewing 600 applications before yours. The responses start coming back in March. In March, I check my email a little more often than usual. I look for the mailman, flipping through envelopes for the latest acceptance or rejection letters. Who knows how each day will be, a celebration or a sigh? Most day’s there’s no response, just bills and junk mail.
After all that anticipation, here still hasn’t been any selling of art. If you’re accepted, you get the chance to sell art. That is, once you’ve created your latest series of work, edited down the images, printed, matted and framed, promoted the show, packed up the van and made it to the show site to setup and welcome the customers.
The process, when successful, is a series of victories of unknown merit. There is no top. With each step you may not even be getting anywhere more beneficial. And the higher you get, the more chances you have to fall. And yet each year I feel that my work is getting better and that I am getting farther. Or is it all just a delusion? I suppose the only sanity is to enjoy the journey.
