In the end
of July I had the honour of serving as one of three jury members for the
competition in Ste. Marie-aux-Mines.
We received
two photos of each quilt entered on a USB-stick: one full view, and a detail. In
addition, the stick contained an excel-file in which we were to enter our
points. We had to judge four different criteria – relevance to the them,
composition, technique, and originality. These points were added together, thus
each quilt could earn a total of no more than 20 points. The quilts were
numbered, so we did not know any names of makers. Not even now do we know who
made the quilts that were selected. Only in September will we know, when we get
together to chose the best of show.
It was a
very interesting and instructive experience! I myself had received a rejection
of two of my quilts which I had entered for SAQA’s „Wide Horizons III“ just on
the morning when I started my jurying. So I was very much and acutely aware of
the fact how deeply disappointed one feels upon receiving a rejection.
Especially since the competition’s topic, “Yesterday, today, tomorrow” was one
that elicited some very personal quilts. Which in turn might result in even
stronger feelings of disappointed upon rejection.
Overall, I
was surprised by the low number of entries – a total of only 93 quilts had been
signed up. And I was slightly disappointed with the quality of the quilts
entered. Certainly, there were some which were really good, and I did give top
marks of 20 to three of the quilts. (I thought I was being very strict – but
the other two members of the jury did not give perfect scores to any of the
quilts.) But the additions of the individual scores also showed clearly and
easily which 32 quilts would be my personal selection.
This
procedure was followed individually by the other two jurors as well – LibbyLehmann from the USA , and LindaColsh, an American living in Belgium .
We then communicated by e-mail and would have also skyped if there had been
severe differences in judgements, but we were able to solve everything by
e-mail in the end. All three jurors’ scores were added, thus giving us a final
score for each of the quilts. Our scores certainly differed for some of the quilts, which I take to be a
very good sign. That way there were fair chances for quilts of different styles
to succeed. In the end, our judgement was uncontroversial, though. The only bit
of discussion we had was when we had to decide on a substitute for one quilt,
because we had chosen two by the same maker, which is not allowed, but even
that was solved quickly.
So the
whole process of jurying and communicating with the other jurors was a great
experience of co-operation.
I was
rather annoyed with the quality of some of the photos, however. Some of them
were out of focus – which is not bound to make a positive impression on jury
members who want to take a closer look at details or parts of the quilt. Many
pictures had a low number pixels, i.e. photo size – again, that does not help
when a jury member wants to zoom into the picture and look at something more
closely. Some of them were cropped – do I see the entire quilt here, or what?
Some of them were crooked. When I look at a photo for jurying I don’t want to
have to hold my head slanted in order to get a good upright impression of what
I am looking at.
Add to that
the fact that several of the statements included referred only to the technique
used, but did not give a clue about the relevance to the topic. And indeed
there were some quilts which would have needed such an explanation as the
relevance to the topic was not obvious on first sight. And there were some
statements which included so many mistakes that it did not necessarily help in
making the relevance to the topic any clearer.
From these
experiences I want to point out several points which somehow seem obvious but
definitely need to be adhered to in a much more particular way. When entering a
quilt in a competition in which photos are the basis for first rounds of
judgement, please
- Make sure that somebody takes
the picture who really knows what s/he is doing. It might be a very worthy
investment of taking the quilt to a photographer and having a professional
picture taken. Make sure that the quilt is depicted straight, that nothing
is cropped, and that ever part of the quilt is well lit.
- When taking the photo yourself, make sure that you have the settings on a 5 MB file. It will make it a lot easier on the jury to zoom in and look at specific details – which in turn will help the chances of your quilt!
- For a detail shot, chose an important section of the quilt, where the technique used can be seen, or which is vital for the composition. A detail of an uninteresting background section is not what the jury is looking for.
- Make sure that your statement is grammatically correct, in what ever language you are using. If you are not sure about your English, please have somebody look it over, or get somebody for the translation. Statements with too many mistakes in them do not help the chances of selection ...
I do wish
everybody success when they are entering for a competition or show. However, a
jury must always select only a small set of the quilts entered – rejections are
bound to happen to any of us. Just don’t take them personal.
Thanks for this - very good information here.
ReplyDeleteCheers,