With the end of the year fast approaching, I have been spending the last month or so sending out various applications for exhibitions, residencies and grants. At the moment I have sent off five applications and received one rejection. I am expecting to hear back about the Santo Foundation Individual Artist Grant this week which provides grants of $5000 and $1000 to three and five artists respectively. In addition to that I have submitted exhibition application for Shiseido Art Egg and Site:Brooklyn - Black and White which I expect to hear back from in January. I also submitted my first artist residency application to the Albers Foundation which I also expect to hear back from in January/February.
The application process has always been an exercise in procrastination for me. There is the revision of your curriculum vitae and artist statement. I have updated versions of both, however I do my best to tailor the length and content of the C.V. and the artist statement which requires thought and consideration rather than the speedy cut and paste. In addition to that, I have to go through my image archive of works and decide on the best image for each work in my portfolio. I have been doing this on the fly and this makes the process rather tedious as I have to search through my photo library to find the desired image. With these last few applications, I finally have a collection of images that I am happy to use for submissions. The details of each work such as title, size, medium, and year is also another source of administrative work that I am not particularly excited to tackle. Pricing is also another hurdle.
On the plus side, working on various applications helps me to define my current studio practice by reflecting on the progression of my work over the last two years. It also allows me to better characterise my studio practice in words and ideas as well as helping to refine my thoughts about my progress as well as where I would like to move towards in the future.
There are a number of applications that I definitely plan to tackle before the end of year which includes the Studios at MASS MOCA artist residency, the SVA MFA Art Practice Artist in Residence, and the Working Artist Grant. There are another handful of applications which I am leaning towards submitting, but have not fully committed to such as the Setouchi Triennale 2019 Open Call, the LACMA Art and Technology Lab Call for Projects, the Open Call for Emerging Curators at Hong Kong's Para Site, and the 6th Tokyo International Mini-Print Triennale at Tama Art University.
As with all applications, I hope there is good news at the end of the process, but I also take comfort in the knowledge that each application that is prepared and submitted provides an opportunity to put my studio practice into sharper and sharper focus.