I was notified via email that my proposal for the Ella Lyman Cabot grant was rejected. Here in Mass. where I won the Outstanding Drawing Prize in 2007 when the Director of Harvard selected my "Dock with Rope." If ever I needed a grant, it is now. Struggling to make ends meet, I can't afford my little supplies. Thank goodness, shipping for my work for the National Drawing Show, only cost $7.
From thought to image on paper to a fabrication 3-dimensionally out of hard materials. That is the basic steps of this dance of drawing into sculpture. But, time has already become an element of my drawing, before the 3-D elements were considered. So, the process did not flow in a traditional pattern of 2-D to 3-D, to the 4th dimension of time. So, how do I interpret the time element into the heavy mass-laden, sculpture? I have to model it like anything else 3-D.
The other thought is about juried art shows. Should winners be chosen at all? I mean, yes, we could all use a boost to our resume, but should the glory stop at being chosen to be in the show? Does a ribbon encourage a collector to part with his money? Does the selection of a few winners create discouragement in the many others whose work didn't win? I've won cash awards when I could barely afford shipping to the show, so it helped me greatly. Grants can have the same effect. It appears that winning anything may have similar feelings to those that didn't...even stories of someone finding something that others didn't. A career, a wallet, a voice.
On Monday August 18, I received an email from a Clerk, announcing that I would be notified of the committee's decision of my proposal by the end of September. Today marks the last day of the month and I am awaiting a decision that could catapult my 20 plus year struggle on a shoe string budget to an exhibition ready format. Of course, after that I would have to pitch it. But each support system snowballs the project into a stronger case. And of course the granting agency gets the benefit of being visionary or atleast for being insightful enough to realize the merit in an artist's deserving work.
