Deadline Extended: "Sick and Tired"

In 2007 or 2008, I became a teacher. I had accumulated enough experience through graduate school for them to trust me with a class of my own. I don't remember if I did a decent job or not with that Beginning Photography class, but I do know one thing about teaching that class:

If I set a deadline for students to meet with particular assignments, I stuck to it.

I had been through undergrad and had experienced professors who would extend deadlines for assignments all of the time. In the world of college, I was always under the impression that I was being prepped for "the real world," a world with deadlines, stress, and consequences. When a teacher took liberties with changing the deadlines for assignments (sometimes on the days when assignments were due), it left the students who had completed things on time with a strange taste in their mouth. There was a collective air of "dude, what gives?" in the classroom.

Because of that, I work through complications with students and never change deadlines the day assignments are due.

I bring all of this up because the same thing is happening in "the real world" now. If I were an accountant or lawyer, this would probably be different. But in the world of art and art exhibitions, it seems that extended deadlines are now par for the course.

The most recent deadline change I've experienced is that for Critical Mass 2012. Photolucida's annual juried competition is one of the biggest networking opportunities for exhibiting photographers.

And this year, I feel like I finally have the chops—and the courage—to enter. The past week was a flurry of Photoshop and scanning, of the spot healing brush and image resizing. I finished up my portfolio of ten images (now visible for the first time on my website. Don't be fooled; these are new versions of familiar photographs) and submitted. The deadline for the competition was noon today.

Twenty minutes after I submitted my work, I saw on Facebook that the deadline for Critical Mass had been extended.

It got me thinking. After a quick search of my photo email inbox, I found that since December of last year, I still had emails about extended deadlines from fourteen different competitions. Many of them are repeats from the same organizations. There are probably many others that I never hear about because I am not on particular mailing lists. The exhibitions and competitions with extended deadlines are listed at the end of this blog.

An extended deadline for an exhibition tells me two things:

1. "We haven't received enough entries for this exhibition, so please tell your friends to submit."
2. "Your work was received prior to the original deadline, and it's not good enough to be shown in our gallery."

While #2 is a big stretch in both logic and imagination, and is obviously not true, item #1 is almost a logistical slam dunk 100% of the time. Most arts organizations struggle to make ends meet, and they charge entry fees in order to recoup their costs. (Critical Mass actually has a section on their FAQ page that outlines where the entry fees go towards their overhead and other expenses.)

Submitting work to shows and being rejected shouldn't be taken personally. I'm getting more and more used to it every week. (A rejection letter came to my house today, actually.) Deadline extensions, however, feel like more of a slap in the face because it makes you call the work you put into submitting work on time into question. When you're given more time, you second guess yourself. At least I do.

It doesn't matter to me if a deadline to a show is extended and I'm rejected from the show. It's happened before. Or even if I get in. That's happened to me too, but that's not the issue here. The issue is that, like the professor who changes deadlines in the middle of a semester, making people work on something for a specific date only to extend it at the last minute is an insult to artists everywhere.

Pick a date and stick to it. If it doesn't work out this time, then set your new (extended) deadline accordingly when the call for entries goes up next year.

And to the artists who aren't submitting their work to these shows on time: get a move on. Or get a planner or something. This isn't undergrad.

*************

Onward Compe 2012 - December 2011
Midwest Center for Photography Juried Exhibition - December 2011
SPE Member Show at RayKo Gallery - December 2011
LACDA International Juried Competition - March 2012
Manifest Gallery INPHA 1 - April 2012
PDN Great Outdoors Contest - April 2012
Midwest Center for Photography "Grow" exhibition - April 2012
PDN Faces Contest - May 2012
Midwest Center for Photography "Vacate" exhibition - June 2012
Midwest Center for Photography "Midwest Photo Emerge" - June 2012
LACDA Juried Competition - June 2012
PDN "The Look" competition - June 2012
Manifest Gallery Recent Paintings - July 2012
Critical Mass 2012 - July 2012

Strangers Pick the Best of 2011

Each December, the users of the online forum ufck.org submit their votes for the best albums of the previous year. All of the submitted lists are tallied by some dear soul who has the time to assign point values to each record.

My relationship with the UFCK folks has changed quite a bit over the last year. The UFCK Photo Project was a big step for me integrating myself into the community and becoming a regular. In the past, the only claim to fame I had was the occasional animated .gif I would throw together in Photoshop.

I submitted a list of albums this year for the first time. By no means a music expert, I scrolled through iTunes in the hopes I had listened to some new music during 2011. I had. Nothing extensive, to be sure, but there was enough variety that I culled together my favorites from among the critically acclaimed to the less-so.

Several things happened during this year's UFCK top 25 voting. State Champion, a relatively unknown (save for UFCK.org) rock band from Louisville, took top prize. I met frontman Ryan Davis during my photo trip, and photographed him for the project, despite his never having been a member of the message board. (Though the band has been fodder for many a fantastic board experience.) Enough nice things cannot be said about him, especially considering I met up with him at his place at 9am, while he and his girlfriend were getting ready to head up to Kings Island for the day.

To access the list of UFCK's top 25 albums of 2011, go here. What you'll find is a mix of eclectic and fantastic music. With each entry on the list you'll also find a custom blurb written by a member of the forum. Sometimes the blurbs are ironic, sometimes they are clever. Other times, they are simply a litany of inside jokes that any outsider (or boarder with fewer than 50,000 posts) would fail to understand. The blurbs are usually more descriptive of the person who wrote them than of the record they're describing.

Take a look and you'll learn about UFCK, some new music, and the lives of people who take their music very, very seriously*.

And you'll also have a chance to download, print, and enjoy your very own State Champion Activity Book. Happy coloring!

* This blog does not endorse Dave's Rawk Blog, its opinions, or any of its absurdity. It is worth experiencing at least once, though.

One Week In (And a Day Late)

With the new year, I've decided to add some regulation to my ever-increasing daily life.

After one week of cavalier behavior, and with the end of vacation, I've devised the following schedule that I hope to stick with as much as possible. The new schedule should increase my productivity as both an educator and artist as much of the regulation involves making stuff or getting stuff in order. Below is the schedule I've concocted, no doubt subject to change.

Saturdays - Blog posting. So consider this yesterday's blog post.*
Sundays - Art making. That basement studio gets lonely most of the time. (This also parallels with my book-a-day project from a few years ago.)
Mondays - Music. Haven't opened the guitar case in ages. (Halloween, to be exact.)
Tuesdays - School. All day. Prep work, meetings, paperwork, you name it.
Wednesdays - Catch-up day; whatever I've missed or let slip the previous days gets made up here.
Thursdays - A free day to relax
Fridays - Cleaning. Studio, house, office, classrooms, cars, laundry, self, etc.

I've also been using Twitter much more. And I'm always hoping more people I know will join the conversation. It's a great way to catch artist calls that pass by CAA, Facebook, and the other usual outlets. Twitter name is meisenhower.

* What a stupid blog post to start the year. Seriously. Please email your complaints to me instead of posting public comments here. 

Philadelphia (And Other Updates)

On Thursday, I'll leave Oregon for the first time since January for sunny Philadelphia and the Society for Photographic Education's National Conference. Hopeful highlights: food, friends, and presentations that had better be good.

The end of March will see some of my work in two shows in New York's Climate Gallery. Book pieces. Small ones.

An overhaul of my website will take place once the conference and this hectic term are at an end.