Rejection

I’ve been entering art exhibits since I was in my teens. Thus, I’ve been getting rejection notices for over 30 years. Sometimes they bug me, but mostly not…I understand the vagaries of jurors and making shows work together and the limitations of exhibit spaces enough to not take it personally. That said, over the years, I’ve noticed that there are some pieces of mine that never get in to ANY show. Or it takes them a long time to age into exhibition (like a fine wine or old cheese)…and these are often some of my favorite pieces.

For a long time, Earth Mother got in nowhere…

It was one of my early “bigger” pieces. I drew it on one page in the sketchbook and then realized I wanted it to be bigger, so it’s one of the first pieces I continued onto a second sketchbook page. This is from 2006 and it’s 32″ wide by 82″ high.

It has hand-embroidery on it as well as all the standard quilting I do, and it usually lives in my entryway, scaring the crap out of any of my kids’ friends or parents who stop by (whoops…I’m sure I didn’t do that on purpose). It took three years of trying before it got into a show, and it has now been in three shows.

It does have three eyeballs and three nipples per breast…not exactly normal.

It’s possible that my photography was an issue. Because it was such a long, skinny piece, it was difficult for me to photograph in my small space, so I had it redone when I finally got a real photographer. I don’t know if that helped or not, but even though it technically has aged out of most shows, it is currently in Aliso Viejo at the Soka University show. I did think for a while that it would never get in anywhere, and I really liked it, plus it took a ton of time one summer to make…it’s hard to spend that much time and energy on a piece, and invest so much of yourself into it, and then have it get in nowhere.

When I went through my exhibition records, I found a few others that have never seen an exhibit wall…some make more sense than others, but honestly, I don’t know what makes some exhibit-worthy and some not.

Soda Sux, Wine Is Better is a really old quilt…

It’s so old, it’s all hand applique. No really. That’s how I used to make my art quilts…like one a year. And it’s not even that big, only 17″ w x 22″ h. It’s from 2000. It has never been in a show. Ever. I’m saving it for my retrospective. Yes, it’s a little weird. I think I was still breastfeeding the younger kid when I drew it. I kept getting these monster headaches when I was pregnant and couldn’t take meds (I threw everything up anyway), and the doctor would tell me to just drink a soda (ironic now, when you think I was diagnosed with borderline gestational diabetes with that pregnancy)…I didn’t drink the damn soda. Honestly, I was lucky to keep water down with either pregnancy…and I’ve never been a fan of soda.

There are three or four other quilts that are just plain strange and/or in your face that I haven’t entered many places, so I don’t really worry about their getting in or not, but this one got entered a ton of places…It was different than my other stuff, but not SO different I thought. This is 3-Piece Family,

obviously a post-divorce quilt when the kids were still little. It’s from 2009 and has never been out of the house.

There are a couple of pieces from last year that have never been in shows and one from 2012, but I haven’t given up hope for them yet. This one, though…this is One of My Kind and it’s based on a dream I had after my grandmother died…

Although it took me a long time to actually draw it and make it…this sucker is BIG…and it’s from 2011…and it’s never gotten in anywhere.

There is a lot of nudity and it’s a very busy quilt, but I love this thing…

which maybe is why it never gets in…it’s the Kathy Curse or something. It has not COMPLETELY aged out of the exhibit realm, but almost. Most shows are asking for the last three years at this point, and this was October 2011…so not a lot of options left for it. I feel bad for it. It was my big summer quilt, my masterpiece for 2011, and it has some amazing stuff going on in it, but it just gets rejected over and over. I have a few more shows it can be entered in, and then it gets hung in my hallway or entryway, therefore to scare teenagers who enter here. I don’t really worry about whether it will get IN when I make it…I just got an email from a curator on one of the shows I’m in this year where I made the piece AFTER being accepted, and she made my day with her comments…so I’m doing OK. Rejection is just part of the mix when you’re an artist. Your art is so much a part of you that it can be hard to have a favorite piece rejected time after time, but if you remember that each show is one juror or a group of jurors and there are another 600 pieces that it’s up against and they all have to work together, when you make art like mine, art that challenges and is sometimes really out there, you have to accept that it won’t always get in. It’s not a reflection on you, yourself. I know my heart and soul is in my work and enough people respond well to it that I don’t have to get too down because of a rejection or two (or ten).

That said, it’s always nicer to get IN.