It's Application Season Again

I hate application season!

...and I totally love it too, because it is exciting to try to write something that sells yourself to a jury without setting off their BS sensors.

The deadline for the next big show that we regularly apply for is August 13 and since there is always a lot of competition in the jewelry catagory the pictures have to be great (not just good or ok but great) and the text that accompanies each application has to be truthful and interesting and compelling.

That can be a challenge when sometimes the most interesting thing that pops to mind when asked to say something interesting about myself is "I make jewelry". Whoopee, & so what, so do a lot of other folks and just what is it that makes you so special?

...and that is the part that I hate.

Fortunately the process has changed a bit for this year, it is simpler. They no longer want a CV, a seperate bio, an artist's statement, and press coverage to go with the step-by-step how do you do your thing documents. This will save me a lot of paper, but not as much as it will some others I am sure.

This year they want a product price list with step-by step description of the process and to tell them who else in involved in the creation and how. To get cheeky, I wonder if I should give credit to a supreme being for making the pretty rock that we use? And they want a Biography where we tell them about our education and training and where we have shown & sold our work and then they still want to know about us. Isn't knowing all the rest of it enough? Do they really need to know that I own 2 cats, am occasionally neurotic, a bit paranoid and periodically bounce between a need for immense social contact and the desire to be left alone to 'concentrate' for hours on end? And that my partner borders on manic bursts of energy that propell him through projects that last for 48 hours straight? Or do they just want to know why we make art?

I don't know because sometimes I get caught up in trying to figure out what I am really being asked for.

The problem with artist statements and biographies is that some of the ones I have read are TMI!! Really too much information. I like to know the artist. I like to know what makes them make art, I get uncomfortable when I find out that they are in the middle of a huge family free-for-all because grandma left her diamonds to her other daughter-in-law, or that they paint real private-parts as an after hours kink, or that they collect toe-nail clippings...

So in taking the time to write this I have concluded that they really don't want to know the literal us, they want to the know the figurative us, the pretty part of us that makes one of a kind jewelry, they want to know the why behind the how.

And we are back to the Why question. Why do we do this? Excellence and the need to achieve. Guess I better go add that to the bio page.

Wishing myself luck with this application,

Cynthia