I hopped on the Baker Artist Awards site again last night to take a look around. Many new artists have joined over the past month, and currently only 18 days remain for voting. The whole JPG Magazine debacle has kept me thinking about user-generated content and the widening pool of artists, especially digital artists and photographers.

While I love the Baker Awards overall, I noticed a lot of entries last night with no artist statement. I include in this category folks who wrote along the lines of “through my paintings I hope to capture everyday moments and the relationships between people and the space they inhabit.” Just as it disturbs me when I receive woefully inadequate resumes at the office, I am troubled when I see up-and-coming artists disregard one of the most basic expressions of professionalism in their craft.

The artist statement provides conceptual backing for a body of work. Ideally, the content and subject are articulated clearly to give the reader an accurate impression of the art even without actually seeing it. The artist statement also provides a forum to discuss metaphors, themes, and/or issues present in the work.

While visual art is about creativity and sometimes breaking the rules, galleries and juried competitions always ask for an artist statement. If there isn't enough content to craft an effective statement, the work just isn't ready for the professional arena. In an ever-expanding art world, these details gain greater importance, not less. Faced with a glut of images, jurors have an obligation to single out and reward artists whose work is well-considered and well-presented. Truly good art is a marriage of technical skill and great ideas, and anyone who has defended their images through a long critique knows it's about much more than being able to tack pretty pictures up on a wall.

It's a competitive world out there, and Baltimore's artists need to recognize the amount of foundation money at stake here. In a month or so, one of us will be awarded a $20,000 prize. With 496 entries so far, work that seems conceptually incomplete will be easy to weed out, and I foresee the winning art being both thought-provoking and well-executed.

Do you agree? What hallmarks of professionalism and care do you look for in visual art? Please add your thoughts in the comments.

Seriously, it has been so hard to get back to work since spending a week and a half in Pennsylvania for the holidays.

With less than a month until my self-imposed deadline for the MICA application, there is a lot to do, especially factoring in a week-long ski vacation in late January.  I'm just glad I have a few things going for me.  In the past, I have always “worked on” portfolios, going out on a lot of shoots or spending long hours painting in my room.  The need to develop a portfolio in response to an application deadline has been the primary source of stress time after time, and it feels great to be able to draw from a strong pool of images I have already produced.  

I have enough photos for the MICA portfolio in each of my two primary bodies of work.  This means I can skim off the cream from both of them, drawing my descriptions from the artist statements I HAVE ALREADY WRITTEN.  Piece of cake, despite the tedious process of resizing all the files and assembling them into a powerpoint presentation.

The two-portfolio requirement – one must be a collection of images detailing community work – adds another fun twist.  My current AmeriCorps*VISTA assignment seems to have set me up perfectly for that portfolio, since community work is what I do for 8+ hours per day, every day.

Needless to say, this takes a lot of the worry out of grad school applications.  I can work with a fast turnaround on writing projects, so I have no doubt my essays will take fine shape.  I tend to abandon projects easily, but I have already committed myself by asking for letters of recommendation.  Everything seems to be working out in my favor, I just need to keep the momentum going.