"Volary"

Funny.

I have had pieces juried into major art shows in Charlotte & a half dozen other cities/metro areas. In those places, I receved multiple awards for my artwork. When I moved to the sleepy People's Republic of Bucyrus almost 2 years ago, I began looking for local art venues. Mansfield, at 30 minutes away, is the closest art scene.

Show entry in Columbus has been no problem. I even had a solo show @ Kenosis over in mansfield. But, for some reason, breaking into juried shows @ Artworks on Main & the Mansfield Art Center has been an uncrackable nut - until today.

I entered 4 pieces. One actually - finally - made it through the gauntlet somehow! What's funny is that I assembled the piece that got in [literally] the day before entry. The idea, however, had been brewing in my soul for weeks. I used some recycled anatomical collage figures from another piece. And while they took some time to make originally, the assembly of the final piece took about 4 hours. And it got in. Now compare that to the hours & hours of painstaking production on each of the other 3 pieces. Each of these, I feel, are just as worthy.

Funny.

In addition, the exquisite corpse project I helped organize also got in. 14 or so artists were involved. Each artist took a body part with the simple rules of: create a somewhat life-size part, use any medium you want, turn it in & we'll mesh it all together Frankenstein-style. The final creation is a sight to behold. The figure is nowhere near as refined as we had planned due to time constraints.

It got in.

It won an award.

Funny.