Like many folks, I like good news, especially when it is a good surprise too.
We received a call from a colleague in the Nova Scotia Designer Crafts Council and of the Metal Arts Guild on Sunday evening. My initial reaction to someone calling is often "what did I do now?" as compared to "what did I do right?" and I usually do not hesitate to ask.
It turns out that what we did right was submit a piece to an upcoming gallery exhibition called The New Cartography of Craft at the Mary E. Black Gallery in Halifax, opening on October 25th. The jury passed and accepted the piece to the show. She was calling to tell us the good news.
What we really did right overall was be adventurous enough to stretch just a little bit, make an unusual piece that isn't really the norm for us, and get off our butts and toss it in the ring and risk the possible rejection of the item as not being 'suitable' for the exhibition. It's wonderful that "A Connected Necklace" is good enough. (I'll be able to post pictures of it after the gallery opening so be patient)
There were several things required in the call for entry for this piece, excellence, a relevance to theme both in regards to the idea of New Cartography, and for the Neocraft conference that this exhibit runs in conjunction with, a deadline, an artists' statement, and a return envelope. Some if the bits were easy to do, some took a bit of effort, and actually putting the postage on the envelope to send it took the most effort. The work paid off. This also met another of our goals for this year: participating in more than one group exhibition opportunities.
There are lots of opportunities out there for all of us in the arts/fine crafts field. Some are handed to us when we are approached by a store owner who is genuinely interested in carrying our work, some come to us through our affiliations with various arts/crafts groups that we can join, and others are posted in the backs of magazines or on online forums. Sometimes we have to dig for the opportunities. Sometimes we have to dig within ourselves to find the inspiration and the nerve to move on the opportunity and that can be the hardest dig of all.
Other good news from the past week includes having an image of one of our pendants included on the Fredericton Arts Alliance Art Trek poster, coming up on the 13th & 14th of October; and our colleague from Sunday evening's call also told us that "it would be very worthwhile" (that's code for you may have won something but I can't tell you what) to come to the opening of the Metal Arts Guild annual exhibit and competition at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia in Halifax on the 2nd of October.
As an artist/fine crafts person who is working to build a positive reputation and identity in metal and stone, I have to tell you that it involves a lot of risks. It would be very easy to sit at the benches and work away making things all day, every day and to never leave that space and face the 'real' world. The real world involves everyday issues of marketing and commerce, and inevitably that means some form of judgement, whether it is someone making a decision to purchase a piece of work, a gallery prospect deciding if the work is the "right fit" for their clientele, a juror deciding if your images of your work or your actual work itself is "good enough" for the show or exhibit... Every time we put ourselves or our work out there we are at risk of a judgement.
I have been finding that learning to live with and coming to love the risk makes the time that I spend making my jewelry far more valuable than it would be otherwise. It's one thing to make it, and to do it well, but it is so much more rewarding to know that I am not the only person enjoying it.
There is joy in sharing,
Cynthia
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