exhibit my photography

So yeah, got official ‘sorry to inform you…’ letter from the gallery today. I’m kinda bumming about it, mostly because I don’t know how many other juried art galleries there are in my area. I’ve looked into a couple of art shows that are going on this summer, though. I might enter one once my self-esteem is back up to par. Harrumph.

I dropped off my portfolio at the gallery this afternoon. A couple of the jury members were there, and one of them seemed reasonably positive about a few of my prints. It’ll be a month or two before I get word one way or the other. I hope they’re interested in at least one or two pieces. we’ll see.

I’m going to tweak the hell out of my portfolio for the next five days, then print out ‘sample size’ pictures on vinyl at my husband’s shop Saturday. We decided that I’d better make the samples on the same material as the large prints we’ve already done, so that the colors will match. We tried it last weekend, but for some reason the vinyl printer has been printing out everything with this wacky green tinge—Uber-ugly! Assuming everything works this week, I hope to get my little samples pasted into my portfolio notebook and dropped off at the gallery for jurying by Sunday at the latest. Here’s hoping!

It’s great to have a family that supports your goals. And a husband who works in a sign shop. For Christmas, my hubby brought home this big bulky package which contianed… my entire digital photography porfolio, enlarged and printed to banner vinyl, and attatched to frames like canvases. I’m so excited. Now I really have to get moving on this goal, because all the prints are leaning against the walls of my apartment (and some of them are really large). I feel liek a real artist now!

To distract myself from the problem of finding a darkroom, I’m switching my focus to digital photography for a while. I posted my first series on my 43things profile to get a little feedback. I’m still a novice though, so there’s a lot of room for improvement. Suggestions?

I went to the local camera shop yesterday (not Ritz, a real old-school camera shop) and talked to the owner about starting a portfolio. I went out on a limb and brought my binder of negatives. The camera shop guy liked some of my stuff—and he’s been in the business for thirty years, so I was excited.

The problem is, what happens next. I asked the guy how much he charges to make prints. He says “you don’t want to do that. You don’t want what we do here, you want a real black and white print. You need to get into a darkroom.” The problem? Well, put aside that I haven’t been in a darkroom in 5 years. The big problem is there aren’t many darkrooms around. I’m not attached to a university at this point, so who knows where I’m going to find one. Oh well, at least he liked my stuff.

I found a co-op gallery nearby that might, maybe, perhaps, possibly accept some of my work. I’ve talked to a few of the contributing artists and gotten info on the jurying process.

Walking around the gallery I felt totally out of my league, though. They already have some really nice black and white landscapes and architectural stuff, which is what I’ve done best so far. They’re not going to want more of the same. So I guess my only choice is find something different to submit for jurying. Oy vey, the drama…