Getting Your Work Out There
By Jessica Molcan
The semester has started with a bang, and for some of the transfer and foundation students the atmosphere at Emily Carr can take some adjusting to. Once you’ve gotten your feet wet and into the groove of producing a body of work, you might want to have your best pieces seen by the juggernauts of the art world: curators, collectors and critics. There are quite a few opportunities out there for beginning artists to apply for shows or submit to printed publications — such as the WOO.
The WOO puts out a quarterly publication to showcase the best and brightest that Emily Carr has to offer. We’re currently accepting submissions for the fall issue until September 20th, 2013; all the requirements along with the submission form can be found below the post, or you can just click here.
The Emily Carr Connect blog posts calls for artists, for instance the recent dutil. Denim show to pay homage to the legacy of the artist/denim relationship. The deadline for applying is September 15, 2013 (see links at the end of the post).
Outside of Emily Carr, the Alliance for Arts and Culture has a frequently updated list of call for artists of all disciplines. These shows are typically juried and generally have an application fee between $10 to $20. Acceptance into a juried show not only helps you build your curriculum vitae (CV), but also comes in handy when applying for grants or graduate programs in the future. Are you still in foundation? It’s never too early to start building a strong CV.
However, if you’re just looking to make some cultural waves with your artwork, there are movements such as Free Art Friday. While not necessarily occurring on Friday, the concept of Free Art Friday is to lift the constraints of the artist and collector relationship by producing snippets of work with no strings attached. These works are generally left in public spaces to be discovered by an unsuspecting passerby. It’s liberating and also makes an interesting project to document.
Documentation of your artwork is generally required for calls for artists — which you are hopefully all in the habit of doing— but it’s much easier to provide a sleek website URL for your portfolio. Check out some of the free options for showcasing your work online such as Behance and Carbonmade; both sites provide an easy way to display your work without having to fiddle around with HTML.
Below you’ll find the links to the mentioned call for artists, the Free Art Friday movement, and the portfolio sites for displaying your work.
Calls to Artists
Emily Carr Connect Blog: http://blogs.eciad.ca/emilycarrconnect/
dutil. Denim show: http://blog.dutildenim.com/tag/art-show/
Alliance for Arts and Culture: http://www.allianceforarts.com/call-for-artists
Free Art Friday Movement
https://www.facebook.com/FreeArtFriday
http://freeartfriday.blogspot.ca/
Portfolio Sites
Behance: http://www.behance.net/