Dear Art Lover,

This is Part 1 of 5 in a series called “Opportunities”.  I’ll be sharing one part each day, concluding with part 5 of 5 this Friday.  You can read many more writings on the Newsletter Archive section of my website, here.  Onto…

Opportunities, Part 1 of 5: Getting Started

January is typically one of the slower times of my business year, in terms of attention received, artwork produced outside (weather-dependent), sales or inquiries.

January is also one of the busiest months for upcoming deadlines for artist opportunities, grants, residencies, plein air festivals, competitions and exhibitions.  I’ve been applying to something of some sort almost every day, averaging maybe 7 or 8 a week, evaluating between 10 and 20 a week.

Often (in best-case scenarios) the process is painless - find a competition or exhibition listed on the Call For Entries website, look over the selection criteria, pick a few pieces from my stock of works not otherwise entered or currently being shown somewhere, create an iPhoto album of those pieces, whittling down to the final 2 or 3 I’ll be submitting.  From there, I’ll remove those pieces from my “still submittable” inventory, and check on my café (Call For Entries) account to see if they are already uploaded into my portfolio - which only has a maximum capacity of 100 pieces at any given time.  If they aren’t, I’ll have to pull a few pieces down from the site, upload, title, label, price the new works.  Sometimes shows will call for an upload of a CV or a statement.  For the statement, I’ll either write something case-appropriate or copy/paste from a massive document I have of past statements and other copy, collated for this purpose.  From there, I click the boxes of the pieces to be entered, pay my submission fee, and the works are submitted.

In a more-challenging-case scenario, the required materials for the opportunity are very specific, lengthy, and sometimes have to be created from scratch.  “Just making art” is not nearly enough of a skillset to be able to effectively land artist opportunities: writing about your work is a job requirement.  You are the authority, the person best poised to speak about what your work is and the impact it has.  Not only that, but you have to be able to rationalize to a jury or a selection committee why you are the perfect artist to be chosen for this specific opportunity.  You provide the context for your own work.

Getting started with artist statements, work plans, CVs and other written material can be a challenge, but after months (since July) of continuous practice applying to (far too many) opportunities, making these materials, and making them to spec depending on what’s being asked for does come easier, even more enjoyably.  I like to do my homework first, to look at what’s being offered by the opportunity, where it is, what kinds of artists have successfully applied in the past, what kind of work the jurors do or what kind of art they make, what is the mission statement of the program, and how long will I be able to expound on each aspect of my application?  Constraints are good to know first - a 2-page work proposal is different than being asked only for a 150-word artist statement, just as a 1-page CV highlight reel is different than a 250-word artist’s bio written in the third person.

Often called for is a fairly standard 1000-character artist’s statement, a CV, and 10 images of recent work.   One of the more strategic moves I’ve made in my art career was keeping my written copy for applications all in a single document, called “Artist Statement 1000 characters”, which since its inception in July 2023 now stands at 66 single-spaced pages.  Whatever I need for a given application, I can check the document first to see if I have something relevant I can tweak to fit.  If the length requirement is short (say, 250 words or fewer) and the opportunity provides specific entry points where my work and artistic philosophies could align, sometimes I’ll just write a new piece of copy, using concepts and frameworks by now very familiar, having written so repeatedly on similar topics.  In fact, these emails (you are reading now) are one aspect of my repeated practice of writing to better be able to improvise to provide context for my work when it comes to applying to opportunities.  Making the context legible in this public forum is a strengthening exercise.  The stronger my writing and the clearer my thinking, the faster I can create copy for opportunities.

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Thus concludes “Opportunities, Part 1 of 5: Getting Started”, the first part of the “Opportunities” Series.  You can read this and other writings on the Newsletter Archives section of my website, here.

Stay tuned for tomorrow’s “Opportunities, Part 2 of 5:  Part of the Work”

As ever, if you haven’t already, sign up for email newsletters on my website, forward this to someone you think would enjoy it, and encourage them to sign up as well.

Cheers,

David