Taking time out

I need a time out. Not like a cranky toddler, but sort of. I've been working overtime at every job I have, and I'm still treading water. So, I'm looking at my calendar to find a day to take a time out. Maybe October 6. I don't have any big obligations that day; new art will already be up in the galleries; we're finished moving out of our storage unit. I may just take the day off and relax, make some art, play, read, SLEEP - do something I haven't had time to do in awhile.

I'm not entering art shows right now - I don't have much in the way of new art to show anyone. And as we all know, artists prefer to show new art. If it's older than a year or two, it's going in the closet or on the shelf and no one will see it again until there is a retrospective or the artist or their gallery is desperate. So my first order of business is to make some new art. Then comes the part I hate - preparing packets for shows. I just talked to a fairly successful artist I know, and she said it took her two weeks and help from her husband (who is also an artist) to put together her latest submissions - and so that is what happened instead of MAKING art for both of them. And there are no guarantees that anything will come of it. Plus it costs quite a bit to enter most shows. So you pay in time, and money and frustration and just hope you get at least one show.

The worst part about putting together packets in this day and age is the variety of submission requirements. Wouldn't it be nice if you could just prepare one basic packet and send it out to everyone? But no, this show requires you to fill out an entry form, print it and send a CD with an image that is exactly 1200 x 1800 pixels (I know what this means but a lot of artists don't), the other show requires you to fill out everything online and post your artwork at no larger than 1 MB to their server, another show wants everything submitted through CAFE (an online submission service), etc, etc. There are even a few that still require slides, only. So even if you are computer-saavy, which I am, it can takes days and days to submit to a half-dozen or so shows. And when I only have one day a week to spend on artwork, it takes a big bite out of my creative time. I sure wish someone would establish a standard format for images that most everyone would use.