Not Enough Artist Opportunities

Too many artist, Not enough Opportunities

At what point should an art organization stop taking applications to improve the chances for an artist to get an acceptance letter rather than a rejection? With a note saying…”after receiving 705 application you were not selected.”

 At $ 57 per applicant x 705… come on!!!! is this how they fund one artist? It has been made clear that the art world is over saturated with artist and not enough opportunities available to support them.

When are we, artist, going to make art organizations responsible and ethical? I say we stop sending in applications that have a high fee, make it free! Close the application at 100, give artist better chances to be selected!

Two of the many rejection letters after hundreds of applicants have submitted.

“Dear Applicant:

Thank you for applying to the Fine Arts Work Center’s 2016-2017 Fellowship season. The Visual Arts Committee pre-jury recently met in New York City to select the finalists. We received 705 applications and only 46 applicants advance.”

“Dear Nayda,

Thank you so much for your application to the Sustainable Arts Foundation.

In this round, turnout was again very high: over 1,100 writers and artists submitted their portfolios, an intense demand which drives our mission…”

 

It is of no surprise why artist Brainard Carey author of Making it in the art world, has been helping artist for more than 5 years. Encouraging artist to break the mold, attempt different things, and take matters into their own hands. Carey publishes an educational newsletter to develop the professional careers of artists and produces a number of online courses to do the same.

https://www.facebook.com/brainardcarey

Graduate school sends artist out into the art world with a pat on the back, Good Luck! let us know how you do!

Things learned outside of graduate school; through professional development programs, like Assets for Artists here in MA and other artists guide tips, here is what I have learned.

1.       Decide on what you want, set a Goal

2.       Action, What can you do to meet that goal? What are the steps it takes? Write them down

3.       How long could it take to reach this goal

4.       Get you Shit together, high quality images, CV, Artist resume, website, cards, etc

Easier said than done! All these steps require invested time and attention. How bad do you want it?

exhibition in Vermont March 2016

US, THEM, YOU

March 1-April 9 2016
http://www.studioplacearts.com/

While occupying a single earth, many generations of people have amplified their differences from others and the similarities within their own defined groups. Rather than coalescing around the idea that "we're all in this collectively," these extremes "US," not "THEM" perspectives are expressed in both radical and in socially-accepted ways through racial and class prejudice, genocide, wars, political corruption, resource allocation, and fear messaging on social media.

Studio Place Arts is hosting a global, invitational exhibit involving artist from the U.S. and around the world that explore the highly charged topics of "US" and "THEM". The exhibition will open March 1-April 9, 2016.
Opening Reception:  Sat., Mar. 12, 4-6PM

My pieces entitled #MurrietaProtest and #DREAMers will take part of this exhibition. #MurrietaProtest, addresses a shameful display of anti-immigrant sentiment in this country- specifically an event that took place in California in July of 2014.  A response to #MurrietaProtest came after Obamas Executive Actions on Immigration, entitle #DREAMers. Activism by young immigrants at the Iowa freedom summit January 2015 and  attendance to Obamas remarks at Town Hall at Florida International University Miami held April 2015. Consequently, my explorations led me to appropriate images online and represent found selfies. By painting from images that are inherently informal and impermanent, I seek to draw attention to how we interpret our engagement with one another as a series of fleeting yet meaningful encounters, thereby pointing a lens to our culture of instant gratification metaphorically pressing pause. I slow down the viewers engagement by painting the portraits the size of a cell phone. This slows down the viewer’s gaze. The “gaze” has been theorized as a means of exerting power through the act of looking; by encouraging a slower gaze in my repainted selfies. I encourage the viewer to consider the lives of others. In this regard, my paintings serve to celebrate the diversity within the Latino community in the United States and to explore the complex ways in which people negotiate issues of ethnic identity using social media as a means of social activism.

 

Reclaiming the Latina Tag Selfie

How many will I be able to complete by the end of the year?!

Reclaiming the Latina tag #Latina the painted series

Why Removing a conversation from cyber space is important:

I aim to carve out a space for conversation:

Sherry Turkle, a clinical psychologist and sociologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has spent the past 30 years observing how people react and adapt to new technologies that change the way we communicate. In her latest book, Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age, Turkle argues that texts, tweets, Facebook posts, emails, instant messages, and snapchats—simultaneous, rapid-fire “sips” of online communication—have replaced face-to-face conversation, and that people are noticing the consequences. Over-reliance on devices, she argues, is harming our ability to have valuable face-to-face conversations, “the most human thing we do,” by splitting our attention and diminishing our capacity for empathy. Empathy is capacity to put yourself in the place of another person and imagine what they are going through.

My series entitled #Latina: Reclaiming the Latina tag aims to create further dialogue outside of cyber space; Reclaiming the Latina Tag blog exists on the social media Tumblr and the creator has encourages women to join her in taking back the hashtag. In other words to post selfies of a non hypersexualized image of what it truly means to be or look like a Latina. The goal of the blog is to have a safe, respectful community for all Latina women on social media. The blog also points out the diversity within the social construct of the word Latino.

#Latina: Reclaiming the Latina tag Painted portraits

What I admire most about Kahlo’s work is her exploration of the self through portraiture. Kahlo’s self-portraits are autobiographical and psychoanalytical studies. Life events, such as her back operations and two miscarriages, inspired self-portraits of her own physical and psychological pain. Just as the modern artists exploited the portrait’s potential to convey identity, the 21st century selfie trend extends this practice to the common person, the non-artist. Exploring the selfie, and its increasing prevalence in our culture, led me to realize that there are subthemes within how people examine or present identity such as ethnic, gender, or religious identity. Selfies are an expression of one’s identity, however contrived or imagined it may be. For this reason my artwork calls attention to the ways in which new technologies allow individuals to actively voice their opinions through self-portraiture.

My series entitled #Latina: Reclaiming the Latina tag aims to create further dialogue outside of cyber space by engaging in traditional forms of portrait painting —namely, naturalistic representations of people rendered in oil on panel. #Latina allows exploration to discuss Western society’s view of the myth of the Latin woman and to contemplate on stereotypes. I can say all women are viewed in society as sex objects but more notably the Latina woman, she is placed under the stereotype of sexual object and described as long dark hair, tanned skin, and the body like a guitar. I also question how society has condition young women from early childhood to equate their destinies with their looks. Reclaiming the Latina Tag blog exists on the social media Tumblr and the creator has encourages woman to join her in taking back the hashtag. In other words to post selfies of a non hypersexualized image of what it truly means to be or look like a Latina. The goal of the blog is to have a safe, respectful community for all Latina women on social media. For me the blog also points out the diversity within the social construct of the word Latino.

accumulation of gestures, colours and textures: Miniature paintings

Details of my miniature Selfie paintings entitled #Latina: Reclaiming the Latina Tag

 

#Latina: Reclaiming the Latina tag Artistic process

 

 

Today I played with the arrangement of the Portraits.

Painting both represents the world and creates its own world. A viewer can, figuratively, enter a painting and occupy that space. For this body of work I envision a Chapel Like experience that the viewer enters where the viewer could contemplate on an individual painted portrait and admire it for any reason. A painting speaks about something lasting outside of the flux of daily life