Gaining New Perspectives by Noelle Backer

Photo by Tim Deimler

Every year at The Crafts Report, one experience or another leads me to view artists, juries, show
promoters or retailers from a new perspective. This year, it was attending the Washington Craft Show in Washington, D.C., one of the most prestigious shows in the country, as an awards judge.

Over the years, I have heard comments from exhibitors about the judging process, and as I raced around the booths of 185 exhibitors trying to view all the work in less than an hour, these comments flooded my head: "The judges never even came into my booth," and "They barely even looked at my work, how could they be judging fairly?" and "The same people win every year -- it's fixed." I cannot begin to address these comments on any grand scale, I can only share my experience and hope that it gives you some insight.

My fellow judges were Kenneth Trapp, curator of the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution, and Jane Mason, nationally known craft collector, former chair of the Smithsonian Craft Show, and current member of the Smithsonian's Women's Committee. The three of us split up to take an initial run-through of the work, and then regrouped to discuss our preliminary list of potential award recipients.

As I hastened through the booths, those old comments ever-present in my thoughts, I realized that seeing all of the booths in the short time allotted to us was not the biggest challenge. The challenge was trying to pick one exhibitor over another. By the time I had reached the end of the first aisle, I had 10 names on my initial list. If the same happened in every aisle, I would have returned with a list of 80 potential recipients for four awards!

Needless to say, the judging process is not an easy one. Personal tastes are often hard to dismiss, although sometimes more easily cast aside when the quality of the work is so strong. This is why, I realized, there is generally more than one judge. Any award decision must be unanimous. Another reason, perhaps, is so that if one judge misses a booth while turning his head toward the other side of the aisle, another judge is likely to see it.

Regardless, the judging process is a human one. That may sound obvious, but the point is that it is not perfect. Still, no one is specifically excluding certain exhibitors from the process. No one is whispering suggestions in the judges' ears on which exhibitors to pick.

It is a difficult process, and not unlike jurying. Three years ago, I sat in on the final jury session for the Smithsonian Craft Show and was grateful that I was not one of the jurors. The jurors have excruciating decisions to make in an even more hectic time frame. It is important to realize that the jurors and awards judges really seem to recognize their role in your lives. Being an awards judge in that sense seems like much less pressure than being a juror. It cannot be easy knowing that your decisions will keep many artists out of the show.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that the best thing to do seems to be to keep trying. (I feel that this could get a tomato or two thrown at me if I said this at a seminar.) In all seriousness, though, if you didn't get into a show one year, there will be a new jury next year, with different perspectives on design and form. And keep evaluating your work, your jury slides and your overall presentation. It is a tough field, and as it grows, competition gets tougher every year.

Along this vein, contributing writer Amy Feinstein sat in on the final jury session for the 2001 Smithsonian Craft Show. She wrote down many of the jurors' comments to shed some light on the process for you and help you increase your chances of being juried in, not only to the Smithsonian Craft Show, but to other shows as well. We hope you find it useful, or at least gain a new perspective on the process.

Noelle Backer is editor of The Crafts Report.

Copyright© 2001

FEBRUARY 2001: TABLE OF CONTENTS