Paperwork, a necessary evil. Wait: nothing about it is actually evil, but it is necessary, just as archiving one’s work is essential. (True, Mario Giacomelli would toss his negatives into a bowl on the dining room table, but few of us want our pictures to look like his.) My contacts are mostly all together; work prints and exhibition prints are currently intermingled, but I can locate a specific negative with astonishing alacrity, and I make that claim modestly.
I was asked to provide a resume, a biography and an artist’s statement. I don’t know of anyone who writes an statement before it’s required. Out of habit, even though I know what and how to write, I looked for self-help websites and found a ton of ’em. Often, an artist’s statement can be painful to read, especially when they run on, take irrelevant detours or, worst of all, tell the viewer how to look at the work. Artists do not always understand their own work, and what they think of it is occasionally more revealing about them than the work itself is. One option for me was to provide a “bio-statement.” Bingo. Concision. Done.
An inventory of 10-20 pieces submitted for consideration (not the final batch, but certainly representative) needed to have dimensions, titles and prices. The dimensions were incomplete since some of the pictures exist only as work prints. Pricing work can be a monstrous head game; more on that at another time. Titles: yeesh. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy titling my pictures, and I have two Gemini-style tendencies. Place and date usually suffice without being too clinical, for one. The other is a predilection for cryptic/goofy names. I used to suppress that, but at some point ceramics guru Bob Wilson goaded me into going that route as well.
Bob, by L.D.
Some of this material got e-mailed to the people who wanted it, and some of it needed to be delivered to the venue, which is local, so I drove it over. Rather than leaving it at the front desk, as directed, I asked for the individual in charge on-site to come out to meet me. This very nice woman explained the entire exhibit program of the venue, took me on a detailed tour of the space, and also walked me through the collection that they own, complete with aesthetic critiques of some favorite pieces. Um, thank you.
1 Comment
Creative Camerawork 
Artist statements are possibly the worst things on the planet. I agree. Well done on choosing the bio-statement.