Street Festival Jury duty

Took this challenge very seriously. For many years I was on the other end of this process, and don't you know we never ever agreed on the winning pick, by the jurors. Now my process was not to choose the winner, merely to select the artists who applied to participate and narrow the field. I felt it my duty to represent all the artists fairly. I went in with specific questions which may be the same ones you would have asked, after attending or participating in Street Festivals.

I've been there.

My questions

Is this process different from last year? No, however Zapplication has gotten better.
Have you already accepted artists? No the only ones not being juried are last years winners.
Are you promising locations? No
How many are we selecting? 160
Are we able to revisit artists if there are questions? No, but we did decide to add extra time by previewing each category prior to selection. This was a way of not choosing the first few who looked good only to find the best artists were at the end.
How have they been filtered to this point? Zapplication is the process we use and these artists notified them that they wanted to be in this show.

My poster was one of the best selling T shirts design s, they ran out before I got mine.

We were 3 jurors assembled in a school room equipped with Mac computers, all color calibrated so that we all saw the exact same image. The largest category was painting with 75 applicants, the next was 74 for photography. To my surprise, only 15 water color painters submitted. Historically they make the best posters. I was also very surprised that one of my friends who is always there did not submit this year. Carol Garvin what a shame.
We all had our own computer and sat in different areas of the room. First we previewed all the images together then went back to our stations to individually rate what we saw, from 1 to 10. The images on the whole were clear, what became somewhat confusing, were the artists

descriptions of their craft. We were able to read what the artist had to say abut their work not the artist statement. One artist had a very obtuse description making it difficult to decide was this the category, that they should be in. Another artist in their tent shot, showed their hand crafted work plus purses hanging on the wall, yet they showed no close up of purses. Purses go into the vendor part of the show not fine art. Another artist had lovely work then on their booth shot showed their name indicating this was not an individual artist. Also we had several people standing in their booth, now you all tell me why? That's the same as putting your name in bold letters somewhere on the image. I did ask to be recused on one as not only did I know the work well, I love it, I liked it so much that I featured her in a one woman show at one of my my galleries. She also had her pix in front of her booth with her husband. Doing these shows most artists already know each other and the jurors also have come to know street artists particularly if the style is distinct. My Key to the City of Miami Beach what a surprise.!

We three were there to make sure that they had the best show ever with a diverse collection of

beautiful art. The process was gruesome, I thought it would be a walk in the park. The fact that I asked to previewed each category before facing our Macs added more than two hours to the process. Breakfast was promised and was the usual, we did much better with lunch. We never left the premises. We had carry out lunch from Greenstreet Cafe, wraps. Now I didn't even know they had wraps on the menu, they was delicious that was a unanimous vote. So when your in the Grove for any kind of show, definitely try Green Street Cafe. I had the shredded chicken it was easy to eat and tasty. The wraps made it easy to continued through lunch. The entire process has become easier from the past. There are no slides to send back no trays to fill with slides. No abacus it all is digital. Click on the computer scroll through the images, take a moment to read what the artists has to say, rate them, continue. I was there approx 8 hours. No pay, just worked for food just like most artists are known to do. I admire the artists who still travel pay the submission fee, booth fee, hotel, food, travel. You all are in a league of your own. Now the process is left to the administrator to put everyone into the area that they said they belonged in. Vendors with vendors and the others all rotated throughout the show to make it interesting and enjoyable and the best to date. It was gruesome sitting in little chairs for 8 hours.