Jurying Day One

Tuesday, August 30, 2005

You know what I got to see today? 444 pieces of artwork submitted for the 2005 Mayor's Art Show. I knew this wasn't going to be easy, but today's job was fun. Today was about feeling the excitement of seeing all of this great art! Today was about the power of giving someone a chance at an art show. Today was about discovering more in depth how my inner art critic works.

The jurying is a two day process. Today each juror picked 50-60 pieces of artwork. This helps narrow down our field of contenders for tomorrow's judging. This initial pick of art work was individual. We each wandered around the room with a clip board of the number, title, medium and price of the artworks in the room.

In addition to myself, the juror's in this process are:
  • Dom Vitri, B.A. Kilks Professor of Law at the University of Oregon. Prof. Vetri teaches Gay and Lesbian Legal Issues and Torts. He has won the UO's prestigious Burlington Northern Award and the Law School's Orlando John Hollis Faculty Teaching Award. Vetri is a strong advocate for the arts and has been active in establishing a rotating exhibit gallery on the second floor of the UO Law School building.
  • Mike E. Walsh, Eugene Installation/Assemblage Artist. Walsh is a former Northwest contributing editor for Artweek. Walsh has juried/curated over 20 regional exhibitons including: Artquake, Portland, Western Biennial, Denver Art Museum and Monumental Works, Eugene. He has exhibited his own work widely and was a featured artist of Oregon Art Beat in November 2004.


Click on the photo to see more images of the artwork as grouped in Studio One in the Hult Center.
panoramic 6

Our instructions as jurors stated that our "task is to select an exhibiton that will celebrate the high quality and diversity of work being done by artists currently residing in Lane County".

I took this to heart, which ment I didn't simply pick what I thought were the prettiest works to choose from. I also didn't simply pick works from artists whose work I am familiar with.

I believe a lot of grumbling about the Mayor's Art Show (and yes, of course there will be grumbling this year too) stems out of frustration with the lack of reflected diversity. I finally understood this today as I looked through the art works. My related frustrations as a submitting and rejected artist have focused on the selected artworks as being characteristically: large and paintings. Looking through the Studio One image set from today, can you see how it is that large works often predominate?

Excuse me for this admission, but this juror did have an agenda of sorts once she set her eyes to the task at hand. Two main objectives: to not overlook small works, and to strive for diversity in my art picks.

Going through 444 art works is no small task! I promised myself that in my first round of looking, I would view each art work for at least 4 seconds. This almost sounds crass, but the math adds up: this is strictly 30 minutes of non-stop art viewing, not even including transition time between art, that some works are multiple pieces and that some artworks are more interactive in their nature.

The art work in Studio One is grouped by media and with a subgroup here and there by size. Looking through the art of this first day I developed some rough additional categories. Quotas, if you will, that fall within the artscape:
  • Illustration
  • Landscapes
  • Environment
  • Self Portrait
  • Portraits
  • Religious
  • Humorous
  • Furniture
  • Politic
  • Music
  • Gender Politics
  • Found Object
  • Amateur/Innocence
  • Abstract


The above categories wrote themselves. Eugene can produce a diverse group of tasty art. We are music lovers who are striving to find our fit in politics and attempting to define the human experience as channeled through gender. We love our dogs and cats and often frame them as humans. We are our landscape: lush, tidal and often clearcut. We love a good coffee table to commeorate a beautiful tree.

And did I mention that we are the art ourselves?