Warning: This post will be more of a personal rant/story-time than useful information I have been a member of my high school's art team for 3 years now and every spring we go to 2 art competitions: one that is open to all medias at the Minneapolis Institute of Art and the other being a national competition that is only open to 2-D art. There are limits on how many pieces you can send to each, I do not know how many it is for the national competition but for my school I think it is roughly 2 dozen and for the M.I.A. competition I believe the limit is 18 pieces. Of those 18 pieces that we send to M.I.A., only a handful are 3-D, which I understand because we don't have as many 3-D artists as we do 2-D, and in my art team, the pieces we send are voted on by the art team. This is where the problems I have with this system arise. As I said before, we can only enter 3-D to one of the competitions, so I think that we should have a minimum number of 3-D pieces that we enter for that competition, not anything crazy just a minimum of 2 or 3 because this is our only chance to compete. Another issue I have with this system is that a good portion of it is purely a popularity contest (as with most things in school) and this is not necessarily an issue for 2-D artists in my school because they tend to work on most of their works at home so few, if any, people in the art team will know who did the work unless they tell them or have a distinctive signature, but 3-D artists do not really have this option because we tend to do our work in the art room when ever we have free time, which means nearly everyone knows who did which piece. If you are popular, this is not a problem, but if you are like me and are not the most popular student in any light, the chances of your works being selected are slim to none. I have enter my pieces in for voting every year, and while I am not trying to say that my pieces deserved to go more than any others, I have over-heard multiple people say that they 'just put down a random vote for a 3-D piece' and that my piece wasn't even an option because I made it, even after some of them admitted that it was one of the best made and designed of the 3-D pieces. I have also witnessed numerous 2-D artists not even walk over to the 3-D voting table or walk over to it and only look at the backs of the pieces. It is one thing to look at a drawing of a flower upside-down, it is a completely different thing to looking at the blank back of a ceramics vessel. With the drawing you can still get a very good idea of what it is and the quality of the piece but with only looking at the back of the vessel you cannot see the design I worked for hours on and it just looks like a boring vase. I have also heard the excuse of 'But I do 2-D so I don't know what to look for in 3-D' to which I say: Do you know what you like at least 10% of the time? Did you look at the pieces? Do they look bad to you? Do they look good to you? If you can answer yes to the first two questions than you are able to answer the last two and therefore know what pieces to vote for. It is not that hard. It is just like 2-D but with some more sides to it. I like to think that since I made it to AP for 3-D and get high grades and a lot of compliments and have won awards at art shows that I make some half decent artwork. I have not totally given up on ever getting a piece in competition but at this point I am starting to accept the reality that because of who I am that I will not be able to send a piece to competition. I am sorry that this was more of a rant than anything else, but this is something that has been bothering me and I felt like writing this not only to get my emotions out but also to show people that this is the reality of peer judging. It can be a great thing but it can also crush people and make them think their work is horrible when in reality they just weren't popular enough. If you ever do peer voting try to keep it all about the work and not about who made it, but if someone has been to every competition for the past 2 years, don't feel too bad about not voting for them, and try to give new people a chance to compete. Also be objective, just because you like bats more than flowers does not mean you should vote for a bat piece that is poorly made versus the flower piece that is made masterfully. Vote for all types of art work, not just those in the category you are familiar with or like the most. View all the works before you vote, and view them from the angle the artist intended. Don't talk about the voting unless if the artist asks you about how you voted on their piece and if they do, be honest with them, not rude but honest.
Disclaimer: All opinions listed are those of the author and may differ from someone else's opinions. All advice given is to be used at one's own risk. The author will not be held liable for any damages done to persons or property as the result of using any statements in this article. The author is not being paid or other wise compensated for what is written within this article.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Cinder Blackwater
An artist who is constantly looking for new things or new ways to use old things. Honest to a fault. As frugal as a broke college student. Individuals in the Creature Family
Categories
All
|