Consulting with ZAPP follow up
I created a PowerPoint presentation from the issues on my list. We spent over two hours going over the issues with my logically defending all my requests. For all the web site issues, I created before and after screen captured images where I added what was needed in Photoshop to prove my points. Look for a major upgrade to the ZAPP system coming next summer. Hopefully they'll keep their word and have me consult on the new system starting in January.

Consulting with ZAPP
Westaf (ZAPP) is having me visit their offices this week to consult with them. I've spent weeks preparing a multi page document of suggestions on how things can be improved on the ZAPP web site and in the system. Everything on my list comes from my personal experience applying to shows myself and working with many of you to upload images and help you through the application process. Here's an outline of some of what I intend to discuss with them.

The "new" ZAPP image size
I've been asked to not call attention to this but it's causing problems for artists. In August ZAPP started to allow 1400 pixel images without black borders to be uploaded. They originally had the new wording on everyone's image upload page but removed it within 48 hours at my request because it was confusing.

Because of the misleading wording on the image prep instruction page of the web site, it made artists think that removing the black borders would make their images more uniform. The wording from the image preparation page of the ZAPP web site is as follows; "Removing the black masks from your current images, while not required, will create a cleaner look when images are viewed by jurors."

That is absolute nonsense. The jurors never saw the black borders because they viewed the jury images on a black page background. I get up to ten calls or e-mails a day asking about it and explain the misleading information. And if you apply to a show using projectors,

ZAPP will add black borders (changing and resaving your JPEGs) to square your images so they can project properly. I've even called a number of other jury slide photographers and explained why changing the format they prepare for their clients will cost them in the future.

Olympics warns man about sharing photos on website
A story about a man who posted pictures from his trip to China to see the Olympics in his Flickr account with a creative commons license that allowed anyone to do as they wished with them, and an image was used commercially in England. The back of the purchased ticket does not say no photography, just no commercial use of the photographs taken.

So how does this effect artists who do art shows. There have been many threads and discussions about how people come into a booth with their camera and the justified paranoia on the part of the artist on whether their designs or artwork will be outright copied. But what if some of those pictures are put into Flickr accounts with a license that gives someone the rights to use the image of your artwork commercially. A model release would be necessary for any identifiable people in the image but what about photographs of your art?

And what's worse than the person who posted the images against the rights specified on the back of the purchased ticket was the comments from the multitude of idiots who think that just because they take a picture, they have complete freedom to do as they wish with it. I've even had an argument with someone who wanted to purchase a print of one of my sports photographs and then reproduce it to sell posters. I tried to explain the difference between purchasing a a fine art print to hang on the wall and having to get a signed release from the basketball player before actually licensing the image from me for commercial use. In the end he still didn't get it, literally. Because I refused to sell him a print.

Anyone ever check Flickr to see if there are photographs taken at any art shows with a creative commons license for others to use the content commercially?

This could be a good follow up to Diane French's presentation at the NAIA conference where she discovered that a painting she had sold years ago was photographed and used to promote an art show she had never applied to. And they even went as far as to use it on the t-shirts and posters.

A little personal perspective here. I used to do the Manayunk show. Of all the shows I've done, it was the only show where I could hang the outside wall of my booth with my 1970's basketball photos and feel like I fit right in.

When are images of art worth more than the art itself
Reston juried for awards using the images uploaded to JAS months before the show. They had a preview party the night before the show and featured the award winners.

Great video of a photographer setting up his booth
Josh Trefethen set his camera to capture one frame every 15 seconds for the three hours it took to set his display up at a show in Texas: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIlOLjBUnZw

Summer booth slide opportunities
Now that the summer shows have started, a lot of artists have been sending me their booth slide to tweak. If you're going to shoot a booth slide at a show, please set it up for the booth slide and take the photograph before setting it up to sell. Take down your name banner and pricing cards. There can be no identification in the booth. Make sure there are no people in the picture. Roll down the sides of your canopy so nothing distracting can be seen through the booth. Be careful of streaks of harsh sunlight. Overcast or cloudy is better. Don't forget to use a tripod and make sure to set your camera properly:

Shoot slightly wider than your booth if you're sending me the images to work on and let me do the cropping and squaring up of the booth sides in Photoshop. If you're having a problem with reflections, I have the ability to change the work in the frames in a 2D booth if you provide properly taken images of the individual pieces.

Brookside 2009 Juror Interview 
With ZAPP's new monitor jury format, even projection juries are clicking to enlarge the thumbnails they see on the laptops they use for scoring because that's the only way to read the individual artwork descriptions. And the words are very important.

Juror's Bias Possibly Influencing Other Jurors
You'll read in the Brookside article about how a juror pointed out the some of the photography might have been purchased from a stock agency. I used this as a basis for a thread on a few different art show forums about how one jurors comments can influence other jurors.

Adding over 40 images to a ZAPP Profile
ZAPP profiles have a limit of 40 images and if you're like most artists, you're rapidly reaching that limit or already there. The way to reduce the number of images is to "archive" all the shows you've applied to that are completed and that frees up the images that were used for those applications to be modified or removed. But in rare cases, you may need to upload an additional image when you already have 40 images in your profile but have found that the upload image button is no longer there. I've discovered two ways to add over 40 images to a ZAPP profile. The first way is to start with 39 or fewer images. Then after uploading each additional image use your browser's back button to return to the upload image page where you browse for the image. The second way is to choose an image that can be modified, then without doing anything to that image, click on the "modify image" button and then when the page of information opens up, click on the "modify image" button at the bottom of the page. That brings you to the completed page for that image and gives you back your "upload image" button at the top. Of course, none of this is necessary if I work on your images because I do the uploading also.

ZAPP does the right thing. Couture Jewelry Awards 2008
Hopefully it will balance some of that negativity we hear about ZAPP. This was forwarded to me by a jeweler who had applied to the Couture Jewelry Awards 2008 show, which never happened.

No Cancellation Refund from Under the Oaks
An artist had to cancel the Under the Oaks show due to double booking that weekend. According the Art Fair Source Book, there was a refund deadline of January 30th which he cancelled by. But the artist was told that though they are sorry he cannot make it to the show, he will not receive a refund of his booth fee. The contract signed on the application and also in the body of the application rules states that once juried and accepted, the booth fee will not be refunded because of cancellations or inclement weather despite what the Art Fair Sourcebook says. So how many shows have arcane refund/cancellation policies, and how many artists give them money each year? It also makes you appreciate how with ZAPP you don't have to pay for a booth until accepted.

Trust your own judgment
An artist gets a telephone call from a show director who's logged into the artist's Juried Art Services profile changing the images used for the show's application. The show director tells the artist that the new images work better as a cohesive grouping and recommends leaving the order though telling the artist that they are free to change the images back to the original chosen grouping. Because the artist trusts the show director who even runs "boot camps" for artists, the application was submitted with the changed images and the result was, drum roll please, rejection. In all fairness, I spoke to Paul Fisher about the incident and was told that because of the JAS computer crash, show directors were allowed access to artist profiles to check for incomplete applications. This can be related to being at a show and having the director of another show come by and ask you to apply because they love your work. The usual response is that I've applied to your show multiple times and have never been accepted.

Are shows getting their application numbers or are artists getting smarter
Besides the shows that extend their deadlines, there are now some shows that have extended their deadlines a second time. I still recommend calling shows a week (or few days) before to see if there are any empty spaces they want to fill.

I'm constantly surprised how often artists ignore what could be the most important thing they can do to improve their ability to get into shows, attend an open jury to see what theirs and their competitor's images look like when projected. I attended the Columbus open jury on February 7-8 and saw fewer than a dozen artists during the two days. Enough lecturing. I sat there for two day taking notes and compiling tips for this article:

Columbus Open Jury Review and Image Tips

Interview with artist/juror Les Slesnick

Limited Editions nonsense
Springfield Old Capitol suggests (not requires) that printmakers and photographers limit their editions to 15 or less. It reinforces that each art show is an entity onto itself with no recognition that artists do shows other than theirs, or actually do this for a living.

Excerpt from the December 05, 2007 Tucson Citizen Newspaper
If you notice a lot of new faces at the Fourth Avenue Street Fair, you can thank the Computer Age. The Fourth Avenue Merchants Association went to an online application process for the first time for this weekend's fair - the 38th annual - which resulted in some 85 new artists. "We have about 356 artists in the show. Twenty-four percent of those artists have never shown in our show before," said Kurt Tallis, marketing and events director with the merchants' association. By comparison, Tempe's Festival of the Arts last weekend, which also used Zapplication for the first time, went with 70 percent new artists, said Kate Hastings, vice president of marketing and business development with Downtown Tempe Community Inc. For the 2007 Winter Street Fair here, 576 artists applied, compared to 360 last year, Tallis said. If the link is still available

Sometimes even the best get confused
For years Uptown has been previewing the images upon submission and zooming in to see if there is a signature on the art work. If they can see what they think is an artist name, they set your application back to incomplete and notify you to remove your name from the images. This usually happens with paintings, but has also happened with work in other mediums, especially if the artist has a branding logo anywhere on the work. This has become a hardship for artists not especially skilled in Photoshop or those who have hired someone like me to work on their images. In fact, each year I have to remove signatures from paintings for at least a half dozen artists. I now automatically take signatures off artwork as I've always done with booth slides. You'd think that there would be notification sent out by ZAPP at the show's request prior to the show taking applications. Or why not accept the same images that all the other ZAPP shows do.

Old Town Jury
All jurors had new MAC laptops with the resolution set so low that they had to scroll to see the bottoms of the images. Well, at least all the jurors were in the same room, and they don't have a midnight New Years Eve closing date anymore.

Do we really need another Ann Arbor show
I first read about it in the Michigan Guild newsletter and then saw a thread on my own photography forum about it. Seems that with the ailing economy in the Detroit area, someone thinks that another Ann Arbor art show is a smart idea. Someone intends on putting on a show in the Briarwood Mall parking lot. For those of you who have never done Ann Arbor, over 30,000 people park there to ride the shuttle buses to the Ann Arbor shows over the four day period. Ann Arbor is already filled with thousands of squatter spaces in every nook and cranny you can fit a 10x10 canopy in. One of the reasons posted to my forum was to give artists who couldn't get into the real shows a chance. The problem with that logic is that some of the shows are actually reducing the amount of spaces. The State Street show has fire lane changes that may reduce the number of booths, the Original show is reducing their spaces from 174 to 137, and the Guild reduced their number of spaces on State Street a few years ago by going to 10x10's where they used to have 6x10's. What comes next, setting up on the interstate in the hopes that someone will get a flat tire and pull over and purchase a work of art?

Juried Art Services crash
Speaking of JAS, they had a five day outage from Jan 12 - 17 due to an overload of last minute applications to the twelve Amy Amdur shows. The deadline for those shows has now been extended until Jan 28th with no late fees. If you've applied to any Juried Art Services shows or even uploaded images since December 24th, you will have to upload images and complete your applications again. And if I've uploaded any images for you, please let me know so I can upload those images again - at no additional charge. Here's an excerpt from their next press release: "On January 12th Juried Art Services experienced a server crash. All systems have been restored but some data was lost. We have taken the necessary actions to prevent this kind of occurrence in the future. We have now brought a new server system online to ensure future security. We have switched hosting companies, upgraded our services, added load balancing services to address both traffic fluctuations and hardware failures and now have an offsite backup server in place."

Three Rivers in Pittsburgh
Three Rivers is using ZAPP for the first time this year. But what's really interesting is that they've reduced the number of days of the show from seventeen to ten. Between the full and weekend sections, they've gone from six periods down to four and have probably reduced the number of available spaces by about a third. I predict tighter jurying and a higher quality show.

Columbus Open ZAPP Jury Feb 7-8, 2009
If you've never seen your images (or your competition's images) projected, this is a worthwhile experience. The jury is scheduled for February 7-8 and will be held in Upper Arlington at the City Manager's office:
3600 Tremont Rd. Upper Arlington Ohio 43221
For more information you can call the Columbus Arts Festival office at
614-224-2606
I'll be attending at least one day and am looking to share a hotel room. Sharing a hotel room during an open jury gives artists a lot of time to analyze how the images look when projected.

Looking for Jurors to be Interviewed
If you've juried a show in the past year or will be jurying a show this year, I'd like to do a short telephone interview with you to add to my juror interviews. Artists need all the information they can get when it comes to preparing their images for jurying. The interview can be anonymous if you choose. I'm especially looking to talk to jurors that have juried shows using Juried Art Services.
Here's a link to my previous juror interviews

Baltimore ACC - How to Photograph Art - Booth Slides
I've been asked to host a round table discussion on photographing art during the wholesale days at the Baltimore ACC show. Tentative date is Wednesday morning February 25th. Look for more information in a future newsletter. I've been asked by a few artists to shoot their booth pictures so I'll be bringing a camera and tripod. If you want me to shoot your booth, call me.

If you need something photographed in time to meet any of the deadlines, give me a call at 800-350-9289.

There are over 35 shows closing in January. Here's a list of shows and closing dates for the next month, most on ZAPP and some on JAS.

Des Moines live video feed and what we learned by watching it.
A few weeks ago, the Des Moines Art Festival had a live video feed of the ZAPP projection jury on the home page of their web site. Granted, the video quality was pretty poor and there was no sound, but it still was interesting to watch for the two and a half days it was happening. I did receive a few calls from artists who weren't happy with the way their images looked and wanted me to evaluate them. I don't think that any images seen in that video feed should have been judged for quality for a number of reasons. There were artifacts from the poor quality feed. There was a slight angle of the outer screens to the camera. And there seemed to be slight screen movement, and if it wasn't screen movement the artifacts were even worse. But you could judge how your body of work compared to everyone else's. You could judge how well backgrounds matched and individual pieces balanced each other. I certainly hope they do it again next year and this time let everyone know in advance, not just the artists who had applied. I happened to catch a post about it on the Art Fair SourceBook forum just before the jury started.

And speaking of the Art Fair SourceBook forum
Here's an interesting post by Sheree Sorrells (used with permission) about how the economy is affecting shows and what one artist is doing to prepare for the changes.

"I have just finished up a series of shows, 5 in 7 weeks. Four of them were in NC. One in Sarasota FL. 2 shows, both ACC (American Craft Council) shows were better than last year by as much as 40%. The NC shows held even with last year on one, the others were down about 60% from last years figures. Ironically, one of the better shows was an ACC show, also in NC.

I was very concerned about the effect of the economy going into this series, and even posted a question about slashing prices on this forum. We did not cut our prices. But we did do some other things. 1)We redesigned our booth display to focus on higher end pieces. And we tried to lessen the confusion overall of our product line. This worked. 2)We spent a large amount of time beforehand producing smaller items, that retailed at a lower price point. At our worst shows, it was the lower priced items that saved us. 3) We did a mailer for every show. And I didn't use the mailing piece provided by the promoter. I designed my own, showing multiple shots of items we would have, and offered a "value" coupon for $25. savings on a large item purchased. We could only tell any effect from the mailer at all, at one show. One of the better ones. It brought in (to my specific knowledge) about $1000. in sales, and we only ended up giving one $25. discount. Overall, we mailed about 500 first class pieces so I'm not sure it was worth it.

We will cut back next year too. If a show has an "iffy" record, we will probably sit it out. We are going to continue offering the lower end items, but we are also going to add some even higher end items. It is the middle range that we may cut back on. The shows that are most far away will have to earn its existence on our schedule on a newer, more stringent level."

ZAPP image descriptions are now more important. I've been given a series of monitor jurying screen captures to update the simulation on my web site. With the new format, there will no longer be scrolling to see the bottoms of verticals and squares. And when the juror hovers the mouse over an image, an "I" (for Information) appears. When clicking on it, they will see the image description in an overlay. Interesting that they chose that format from iPhoto, the MAC image viewing program. If I were to design it, I would have the information appear just by hovering the mouse over the image and eliminate the two middle steps. You can see a simulation of the new format on this page of my web site.

More artists taken advantage of by clueless photographers.
If you can get 20 (or more) photographs of your work for $300, please be certain the photographer understands what jury slides are and how to photograph your work properly. Twice in the past month I was asked to fix too many images that were photographed incorrectly because the artist thought they were getting a deal. If the price seems too good, it probably is too good, and fixing the images usually cost more than the photography.

Main Street Fort Worth gives back to the artists
Jay Downie, director of the Fort Worth show, sent out an e-mail to everyone who had applied explaining that their expenses are budgeted for 1,100 applications and since they went over 1,100, the difference will be reduced from the booth fees of accepted artists. Last year he reduced the booth fee by $15 and this year by $20. For the record, they received 1,310 applications this year for 200 spaces plus 14 emerging artist spaces. The emerging artist spaces will not be reduced because they already are less than the standard booth fee.

The Relationship between an Artist and Photographer
Most artists only have five or six pieces photographed when they hire a photographer. Fused glass artist Nina Falk has sent me over 50 pieces of glass to photograph in the past year, and as a result, she has great images for jurying, her two new web sites, gallery submissions, and magazine ads. The article with some example photographs

Juried Art Services has expanded it's show list with the Amy Amdur shows. Port Clinton in Highland Park Illinois is Amy's top show and is one of those rare shows where anything is possible because expensive work has a reputation for selling well in the neighborhood that the show is located in.

JAS and truncated artist statement
I've been contacted by a few artists who have had their artist statement truncated in an application. The one common denominator is that they are on a MAC. If you are having this problem, I can help submit your application properly if you give me a call. I have spoken to the Juried Art Services people about it so it may be fixed by the time you read this.

AOL not digital jury friendly
It was recently posted on the ZAPP forum by an administrator that there were problems with AOL and sometimes clicking on a link would get the artist bumped out of what they were working on. This has been a problem for the past four years and it seems to have escalated with the new interface. If AOL is giving you problems, after logging in, minimize the AOL screen and start a different browser. Here are links to download the two most popular browsers (both are free and available for PC and MAC) besides Internet Explorer, which hasn't been supported on the MAC for at least four years. Firefox and Opera. Opera has been my default browser for the past five or six years.

Howard Alan on ZAPP
You may have noticed that the latest weekly notification about ZAPP shows have a ton of new shows listed. Howard Alan is now on ZAPP. Either you love him or hate him but most artists have done at least one Howard Alan show in their art show career. His fine art shows are now listed with ZAPP. That ought to shake up the art show industry a little. In Howard's words, ZAPP is where the artists go to look for shows to do. And like Sugarloaf, currently his shows can be applied to either the conventional way with slides and a paper application or through ZAPP.

And a word to the wise.
With Howard Alan's shows listed on ZAPP, there will be several shows with similar names. Make sure you read the information very carefully about the show you are about to apply to. And you may also want to check out the show web site for more information

Show Deadlines I no longer have closing dates listed on my home page due to the now much larger number of shows that have signed on with ZAPP. I suggest all artists contact ZAPP and ask them to list the shows with closing dates on the home page of the ZAPP web site, like Juried Art Services does. I've put contact information for ZAPP on this page of my web site.

Where did the "Apply" button go?
Within the past few months, ZAPP changed the size of the center white area of all their web pages. This change has made the page too wide for anyone on an 800x600 resolution monitor and requires horizontal scrolling to see the rest of the page content. In other words, if you use an older computer or a small monitor, you may not see the right side of the page where the "apply to this show" button is when you're trying to apply to a show. As of July 2006, 17% still used 800x600 resolution monitors. And as of February 2008, only 7% of viewers used 800x600 screens. But the real question is how many artists use that size because they either have older computers or have scrimped when purchase a computer because they really weren't that interested in the technology when they chose a monitor. In the past week, I received calls from three artists who couldn't see the "apply" button and I walked them through horizontal scrolling to see what was on the right side of their screen.

Comcast search brings in too many results
In a non art show related poor usability example, Comcast cable just changed their menu configuration. Formally when you did a search for movies, you only saw movies starting within the half hour time period that you did your search for, making it easy to decide what to watch. Now each time you do a search for all movies, Comcast shows you eight screens of seven channels each and it's no longer easy to see what's starting, forcing you to take unnecessary time reading through a list of movies, some ending within the next five minutes. Working at home I enjoy watching movies and have been paying for all the pay channels. I no longer can figure out what's starting so they've lost my monthly pay channel fees. The sad part is that they let you choose search parameters for types of movies but don't let you choose only movies yet to start. http://bermangraphics.com/problems/comcast.htm

I received a call from an artist whose images I had worked on. Betsy Kube of the Crafts America Shows wanted to use the images to promote a show but the jury images on Juried Art Services weren't large enough. I called Betsy to discuss image requirements so I could provide images at the correct size for her needs. In the ensuing conversation we discussed the best way to get artists to supply high resolution images. Providing high resolution images to shows gives the artist a much better chance of the show using those images for promotional material, which in turn also benefits the artist by giving them more exposure to the buying public. My suggestion was for each artist to prepare a "press kit" consisting of a bio or artist statement and a set of high resolution images of their art. You can read more about my press kit suggestions:

Severe storms rock the art shows two weeks ago. Evanston and Omaha reported really bad storms that damaged a lot of artist's booths. Don Ament provided these cell phone pictures from the Omaha show.

A reminder that ACC applications deadline is the end of July. Contrary to the way they've juried in the past, they will now have their jurors stay at home and jury on their computer monitors instead of seeing the images projected. What this means for the artists is that the three over two template is no longer relevant and is going to be changed to five across, if it hasn't already. The way the ZAPP monitor jurying is set up is that the jurors see each image individually one after another. That means your strongest images might be better at the beginning and end of the presentation for a good first and last impression. Look at these pages for an example of how the ZAPP monitor jurying currently looks.

It's not too late to have me work on new images for the ACC or any other show, and I can also photograph your artwork.

What's a Booth Shot?
Prior to Cherry Creek closing last November, I received an e-mail from someone asking me to define a booth shot. He had 40 photographs in a newly created profile on ZAPP and wanted to apply to Cherry Creek. I explained that it was a picture of your display set up at an art show and if there was no booth slide available, he could still apply in the emerging artist category. His response was that he had just graduated from art school and would change his application to the emerging artist category. As a follow up, he just e-mailed me the other day asking about which canopy to buy. It seems that he did get into a show (not Cherry Creek) and now needed to purchase display equipment.

ZAPPism
definition - anything that doesn't make sense relative to digital jurying. I've now included a few ZAPPisms in my seminar.

ZAPPism Example
I received a call from an artist who is a painter who paints on porcelain, not canvas or paper. He is very clear about the process in his artist statement and individual art image descriptions. He had applied to a show in the painting category and the show moved his application to the ceramics category, and he was wait listed. Problem is that if he does the show in ceramics category he would be considered buy/sell. A follow up. The artist contacted the show and explained that if he were called off the wait list it wouldn't be fair to an artist who actually worked in ceramics. He feels that he did the right thing. What do you think?

NAIA Coconut Grove Sales Survey
The artist survey about their sales is now available to download (as a PDF) from the NAIA web site. It also includes a lot of quotes from artists about the show:
http://naia-artists.org/work/surveys.htm?

A Great Art Show Success Story
Mark Zurek, photographer/digital artist had the show of a lifetime at Fort Worth last month. You can read about his experience, including his list of five things he did wrong when he started out doing shows just three short years ago:

Art Show Deadlines
Connie Mettler, director of Arts Beats and Eats has extended her deadline for submission. Here are her thoughts on the subject of art show deadlines.
"Most of you have been in this business for some time, but I've got to say, that for many, many years I believed that the DEADLINE on an application was strictly a "drop dead deadline," miss the deadline, you were out of luck. I am sure this is true still for only a handful of shows. More and more I hear from show directors that the deadline isn't the deadline until the projectors (or the rokus) are rolling. In addition, these days many shows are not filling their events by the time of the jurying and often have spaces long past jury time. So, in case you have never heard this before, if you missed a deadline make a phone call. Artists are the constituency of art fairs, without you they do not exist. Most art fair organizers are glad to talk to you."
http://www.artsbeatseats.com

EZUp in the Snow
Emmett Hollander provided a few pictures from the Tulip Festival Street Fair in Mount Vernon, WA

What does ZAPP and College Applications have in common?
In a parallel to what's happening with ZAPP with the art shows getting more applications, online applications are making admissions into Colleges more difficult. Someone posted about this to my Photography forum recently. Because of a universal online application used by over 300 schools called "Common Application," High School students are now applying to up to 20 universities, where they may have only applied to about five to eight in the past. Here's an article about it: http://www.collegeboard.com/parents/apply/narrow-college-list/150489.html

Here's a quote from a 2006 USA Today article:
"Admissions deans say the ease of applying online, along with the growing popularity of the Common Application — a standardized form now used even by many brand-name institutions — are fueling the increase. The number of Common Applications filed online has skyrocketed from just under 41,000 in 2000-01 to a predicted 700,000 this year." Can that be where art show applications are headed?

More Juror Interviews
I have three more juror interviews on my web site. Two from artists and one from a gallery owner. They are now listed on this page with the newest interviews at the top:

Improving the System
Suggestions on improving the digital jury systems. I have a page of suggestions I've made to ZAPP on how to improve the system. If you're interested in my thoughts on the process, you can read it on this page.

Juried Art Services image update follow up
The image requirement wording change for Juried Art Services I mentioned last month shouldn't make anyone run out and change their images, which some artists have contacted me about. No matter what size is uploaded (between 1400 and 2000 pixels long dimension) the jurors only will see the images at 700 pixels long dimension, exactly the same as they've always done since the Smithsonian Craft Show started using JAS years ago.

Coconut Grove sales figures
Coconut Grove reported to the Miami Herald that between six and eight million dollars worth of art was sold at the 2008 show, which they claim was about the same as was sold in 2007. At 325 booths, that would be an average of about $18,000 per booth at the low end. The problem with this number is that a great many artists reported not making any sales or just barely making expenses. To counter this claim of artists riches, NAIA has created an anonymous survey and sent out an e-mail to all artists who have done the show since 2006. If you've exhibited at the Grove in the past three years and have not received the e-mail about the survey, please let me know and I'll provide a link. This is an important survey because if shows think that the artists are really making that much money, they feel justified in continuing to raise their booth fee. The booth fee for Coconut Grove went up $100 in 2008 from the year before.

ZAPP web site off line
On Sunday evening March 2nd, the ZAPP web site was unavailable. If you tried to visit the site that evening your browser may have "cached" the page saying it was down for maintenance and for the next few days it kept showing you the same down for maintenance page each time you went back. The way a browser works is that it downloads web pages (files and images) to a folder called "cache" on your computer and loads the page from your local folder to save bandwidth and time. A number of artists contacted me during that week saying that they were still unable to access the ZAPP site. The solution was to reload or refresh the page or to clear your temporary internet files. Both would force your browser to go to the server and reload the page again. A third solution would be to try an alternate browser.

Modifying a ZAPP application after submission
Most artists know that Juried Art Services lets you tinker endlessly with your application up until the closing date. There is also a way to make changes in a ZAPP application once submitted but it's a little more complicated. You need to contact the show (I suggest telephone) and ask them to set your application back to incomplete so you can make changes before submitting it again without having to pay an additional jury fee. This only works up until the deadline and you are at the mercy of the show, but I've never heard of a show turning down an artist's request to make changes.

More from Broad Ripple.
They received 764 applications their first year with ZAPP, which is up 200 from last year. But the most interesting statistic is that 42% of the applications were from artists who had never applied before.

Open Jury
St James Court will be holding an open jury on March 29-30. Call 502-635-1842 for more information. If you hear of any other shows holding open juries, please let me know.

Tips from a La Quinta juror
Another in my continuing series of interviews with jurors. I was fortunate to be able to speak to a Juror from La Quinta. It's interesting to read about how the jurors juried only one category, at home, and are given three days to complete their scoring. Could this be the future of ZAPP?

Juried Art Services new image requirement wording Nothing to worry about. Though they raised the upper limit (to 2000 pixels) of what size can be submitted, they are going to continue accepting images prepared at 1400 pixels long dimension as they've been accepting for the past few years. The wording has been simplified at my request. "Select an image file: JPG Files Only (.jpg or .jpeg). Images should be between 1400 pixels and 2000 pixels longest dimension at 300PPI (pixels per inch). 1920x1920 pixel images are also acceptable."

When previewing your image choices on a Juried Art Services application, make sure to pay attention to the position of the images on the preview screen. I started an application for Sausalito to do screen captures for my web site and noticed that it's two over two with the booth image on a separate page. Click here to see how the jurors for shows using Juried Art Services see the images

Does your booth slide look like it works with your individual art images.
From an artist who observed the Broad Ripple jury: During the Photography category there was a good deal of confusion because one applicant had submitted three black and white landscape photos and a booth image with European color photos. In the initial run through, the staff even flipped around to another booth shot that seemed to "fit". But when they did the second round where they actually scored, they realized the color booth went with the black and white landscapes. Something to keep in mind: make sure your booth image fits with your submitted artwork!

Shows posting images of accepted artists To add to the list I previously sent out, Coconut Grove includes one image for each artist:

Listing of shows on ZAPP
Finally ZAPP listened to my complaints about the ways shows list themselves. They are now listed by the actual name of the show. No more 5th annual whatever festival following 57th Street. With over 150 shows, it's now easier to find a specific show on the page.

Ever wonder what it's like to be a juror? Mary Jane Cross was a juror for the 2007 Long's Park show and she offers some insight into what a juror thinks about:
Interview with a Long's Park juror
Two things she stressed were the amount of time they had to look at the images and the short (100 character) artist statement.

Shows posting images of accepted artists
Lafayette Round the Fountain posts the entire set of images (including the booth) of accepted artists:
http://www.roundthefountain.org/2007_preview.htm

Here are a few more:
Smithsonian Craft Show
http://smithsoniancraftshow.org/indexmain.asp
Philadelphia Craft Show
http://pmacraftshow.org/artists

If you know of an art show web site that allows you to view the images of the accepted artists, please send me a link.

Jury details and grandfathered shows continued
Bayou City sent out an e-mail to all artists that applied: "In addition to representatives from the Art Colony Board, we are please to inform you that your work will be reviewed by our invited panel", and then listed the jurors names. I wonder if they give their board members the same scoring weight as their jurors. Well, at least they tell you what's going on.

Sausalito, one of the top rated art shows in the country, is now taking applications through Juried Art Services.

Defining the booth slide.
I've created a web page that helps artists understand what a booth slide is. I'm looking for examples of booth slides in all different mediums (except photography) to be used as examples. Names will not be used. If you would be willing to let me use your booth picture, or even have an old booth jury slide you can send me, please let me know.

Jury details and grandfathered shows continued.
57th Street - "Approximately 75 new artists will be invited to exhibit. The remaining 200 spots are filled by returning artists." Old Town - 20% of the spaces will be filled by new artists

Last chance.
If you might be interested in exhibiting at Ann Arbor, now would be the time to join the Michigan Guild. Exhibiting members of The Guild are tenured, and only need to jury once every three years to maintain their space in the Ann Arbor show. In the past that meant that it took many years for new associate members to rise to exhibiting status. Now that is all changing. Starting in January 2008 Associate Members will no longer be allowed to join, and the new Artist Members will not be given spaces in the show until all the Associate Members have been offered exhibiting status. I know this may sound complicated, but the bottom line is that if you join now there is an excellent chance that you will be a tenured member in a few years. After the first of the year that opportunity will be lost. And being able to count on being in a show like the Ann Arbor Summer Art Show is worth a lot. For a sign up form and more information go to the Guild’s web site: http://theguild.org

Look for the Michigan Guild to start jurying through Juried Art Services in 2008.

The key to using any of these products is the light from the bulbs is diffused through white Plexiglas or white nylon.
My relevant companion article on how to set and use your digital camera

You may have applied to Rittenhouse Square last year using Juried Art Services. This year they are doing their own digital jurying and are asking for ZAPP formatted images on a CD with a postmark deadline of January 4th. You can download their application in PDF format from:
http://www.rittenhousesquarefineartshow.org

If I had known about it, I would have written about it sooner. Coconut Grove has an open jury each year around the end of September. I've been told that they jury two dimensional and three dimensional work on separate days with different jurors, and for those artists attending, they allow you to speak to the jurors on the day their work isn't being shown.

If you know of any other shows that have open juries, please let me know so I can write about it here.

ZAPP tip
Since art shows started using ZAPP, artists have wondered about the order their images were seen by the jurors within their medium. In the course of a recent discussion about image order on the ZAPP forum, this reply was posted by Lara Turner: The ZAPP software enables three distinct options for show administrators to "order" artist submissions in their panel process: (1) by the date that the application was received (changing an application from received to incomplete will not change the application received date as that is logged when the show first receives the application), (2) by the artist's last name or (3) by artist ID. The first two options are self-explanatory; the artist ID option presents submissions to the jury in a completely random order (the software uses the ID number to "randomize" the ordering of results). In response to your specific question about whether there is a default setting, a show must choose one of these options; we prefer not to have any "defaults". So from my perspective, all shows should use application received date for the order to be fairest.

Watching a ZAPP Jury
I've previously posted about how important it is to see your images projected in a jury room. I received this e-mail from an artist client the other day: I was invited to view the preliminary run through for Ft Myers the day before the jury started. All I can say is it was amazing. As long as your images are done right using all the image area and color punch they are incredible to see. Much better than what a slide projector does. My images look exactly like my artwork and jumped right off the wall. If anyone has a chance to see their art work projected like the judges do, you do learn a lot!!! Thanks for all your help, it's much appreciated!!!

Reminder.
Fort Worth is having an open jury with a preview Friday night cocktail party on November 9th - 11th. If you're interested in attending, I'm looking for a (male) roommate. I did it last year with two other photographers and we spent the entire time analyzing the jury process and how the images looked.

Another open jury.
I just did a seminar at the Indianapolis Art center. Broad Ripple will be holding an open ZAPP jury and you'll be able to see all the images projected. Look for their jury dates to be held early next year when they announce that their application is open. And though they're going to be using ZAPP, they've also said that they want to give the artists their jury scores like they've done in the past.

20-30% more applications
The latest issue of Sunshine Artist quoted the director of the Broad Ripple Art Show saying that they were told that they would get 20-30% more applications. I have yet to find out who gave them that figure, but it confirms everything we've suspected. Therefore I can't stress how important the quality of your jury images are.

Deadlines
I now have only the current month's closing dates on my home page and have moved the long list of art show closing dates to an internal page.

Jury Slide Photography
If you're in a bind and need to have work photographed to meet a deadline, give me a call. 800-350-9289. Here are a few examples of jury slide photography I've done recently.

ZAPP Jury Tip
ZAPP waiting lists are better than a waiting list for a show still using slides. A top 20 show in it's first year with ZAPP went through more than half it's 50 artist waiting list on the day the acceptances were sent out. By the time the show came around, they had expired their waiting list and were calling local artists who had scored high but had not made the waiting list.

ZAPP Jury Tip
In October I went to the Fort Worth ZAPP jury to see how the images projected five across. I wrote about it for my web site

ZAPP Jury Tip
I try to keep an updated list of closing dates for all shows using either ZAPP or JAS on the home page of my web site:

Last week I was the key note speaker for the Best of Missouri Hands annual artist conference. My next seminar will be at the Pensacola Museum of Art in June. If you know of an art show or artist organization that can benefit from the information I share, please ask them to have me do a seminar.

Art Shows asking for digital images not using ZAPP or Juried Art Services. There is an ongoing trend for shows to create their own digital jury system, asking for non standard image requirements. When I hear about shows asking for digital images, I make an effort to contact the show and ask them to please accept ZAPP formatted images because it's now considered a standard size (1920x1920) that most artists already have. I have an article about it with image viewing suggestions on my web site:

Please contact any show asking for non standard size images and suggest they read the information. This is especially true for any show not asking for square images, which is fair for artists because it shows both horizontal and vertical images equal in size. If I've worked on your images, I've provided a CD of the files I've prepared. You may need those image files now to apply to shows asking for digital submissions like I've mentioned above. If you can't find that CD or need a duplicate, contact me and I'll provide one again for a minimal fee from my back up files. Also, for those shows not asking for ZAPP format images, I can easily prepare your images to meet any show requirement and provide a CD.

The past year has brought a number of changes to the art shows, especially those that have started jurying digitally. More artists have been applying because of the ease of the online application, which is making for more competition. My position has always been that it's about the images. Just because it's easy to apply doesn't make it any easier to get accepted. The images of your artwork are all you have that sets you apart from the other applicants.

What's better than a great jury image? A set of great jury images that work well together in your overall presentation. To that end, I'm offering a new service for three-dimensional artists. High end retouching to take out hot spots on highly reflective surfaces and dropping the images onto a neutral background that accents all the pieces uniformly. This can take your presentation to a new level. Examples can be seen on this page of my web site.

A new service I'm offering two-dimensional artists is the ability to scan oversize art up to 12x17 inches, at high enough resolution to have more detailed digital jury images than if the work had been photographed either digitally or with film. This is great for scanning etchings, 11x14 photographs or small paintings. There is a testimonial on my digital imaging services page:

Customer service. If you've worked with me, you know the level of customer service that I provide. I've helped hundreds of artists get through the online application process for both ZAPP and Juried Art Services. Here's an interesting antidote. A few weeks ago I received an e-mail from an artist client at 4:45 on a Friday afternoon, asking if she could get 35mm slides from her digital files for a Monday postmark deadline. I immediately called IPrintFromHome to see if they were working on Saturday, formatted her full size digital files for 35mm slides and uploaded them. The artist had the 35mm slides in her hand by 3:00 Monday afternoon.

This is a service I've been offering since I started scanning jury slides. If you need 35mm slides from your improved digital files, I can format them for you and upload the files. If you want to contact IPrintFromHome, there is a link on my digital files to 35mm slides instruction page:

Because of the depth of information on BermanGraphics, I've created a new web site called www.ZAPPhelp.com where you can easily find links to all the digital jury information on BermanGraphics.

The American Craft Council has moved their deadline up by a month to the end of July. Don't wait until the last minute if you have new images you want me to work on, or want to use my high end retouching services to improve your jury presentation.

I can prepare your digital jury images for ZAPP, Juried Art Services, 35mm slides and any other image format requirement, including preparing a CD for you to submit for those few shows asking for one.