DECISION STATEMENT:
2023 POWELL LANE ARTS: THE MARVELOUS AND UNUSUAL
We are always very diligent in curating our shows – reviewing the work in several rounds, much like a tournament process. After our first round of review, we still had 75 submissions under consideration – which means we thought two-thirds of the work submitted could be in contention for this show. Ultimately, though, over more than 10 rounds of review, we determined 43 remaining artists who will comprise this show.
For those of you who have seen one of our shows or shown with us before, you know this is a massive amount of artists (we usually try to stay around 30… okay 35), but there was so much great work, that even though this will be a very large show for us, we had enough quality and dynamic, marvelous and unusual work to fill 3 of our shows. At some point we considered putting the 75 finalists into a hat, and pulling out 30 names, but we knew that wasn’t really fair, and it also wasn’t really accountable. And we want to be transparent, open, accessible, and available to communicate and discuss our approach.
With that in mind, here are some metrics about this particular show:
As we mentioned, this show had 115 submissions and close to 500 pieces.
Of those, we chose 43 artists and 83 pieces.
As you can see from these totals, most artists only got one piece into the show.
For those of you keeping track of all the metrics, that means we accepted about 1 in 3 submissions (37%) and only about 1 in 6 pieces (16.6%).
For some galleries that is probably a pretty common result, but for us (and as I have mentioned to a few people), that’s an absolute blood bath. And part of the reason we give you these details is to ameliorate ourselves, but also to give everyone perspective and knowledge of just how narrow these decisions can get.
As a general note, we feel so lucky to have artists that trust us to view and consider their work. And making these decisions are some of the worst moments of this job, and letting people know we have space for their work is one of the absolute best things we get to do. The artists we meet, whether they ultimately show with us or not, make a job that can be tiring and overwhelming, joyful, fun and great. We really are trying to serve our communities and that is impossible without all of you who are taking the time to read this statement.
Finally, (as always) we'd like to leave you with this: You are brave and creative, and we feel lucky to be inundated with so much great work.
With our warmest wishes,
Carol Taylor-Kearney & Caroline Kearney
Curators and Co-Owners of Powell Lane Arts
