MORE OF AN EMOTIONAL ADVENTURE

My camera is a Canon point-and-shoot for which I have a $30 close-up bargain-basement lens.  The only photo editing software I use comes “free” with my MacBook Pro.  No PhotoShop, no LightRoom (or is it DarkRoom?).    So I’m not a serious photographer in terms of money spent on equipment or software.  But I do take my camera just about everywhere I go.   I am looking at the world differently than I used to.  

Photo of Me at Watson Mill Bridge.  By Debbie Goswick

In this, my Year of Adventure, I am trying new things, taking risks, putting myself out there.  After an excellent photography course at the Botanical Garden by Chuck Murphy, I started attending monthly Athens Photography Guild meetings, something he suggested.  Now those folks are good!  Some of them are professional.  People pay them to take photos!   I usually sit by myself at these meetings, pretending I belong.  I sit in the darkened room staring at the elevated screen, admiring their marvelous photos.  How did they do that?  Could I do it?  Would I ever? 
 

Sign in a Bathroom Stall at the Art School

On the APG Facebook page is information about several juried art shows.  Why not enter the first one, at Athens’ Lyndon House Art Center?  That should be an adventure.  The only requirement is that the “artist” be over 18 years old.   That word is so loaded.  “Artist” or “photographer” — I would have to take myself seriously to describe myself that way.  I ace the part about being over 18.

Because I am not a professional photographer or artist and have no need to win a prize, or even be juried into a show, this is a just-for-learning experience.  

The judge for this show is director of the Yale University Art Gallery.  Yikes!  

When Len Woodel entered shows, he learned that each judge looks for different things.  One of his pieces got a major prize, but six months earlier that same piece was not even accepted into a different show. 

Last year 600 pieces were submitted to the Lyndon House competition but only 100 or so could be accepted.  With all that, plus the fact that so many people doing photography are more experienced and skilled than I am, I do not expect to be accepted.  But it costs only $25 to submit up to three photographs.  Why not do it?  I’m bound to learn something.

Photo of the Judge About to Speak at the Art School

First I go to Pixel and Ink for the printing, then to a discount store for the frames.  Now I know how much it cost me per photograph, which is what I put as the sale price.  So now there are two unlikelies:  a) having a piece accepted and b) if accepted, someone wanting to buy it.  But I bet, even grasping this, that I will be disappointed picking up my three unaccepted entries later in the month.  

One of the Photos I Submitted

The restored 1840’s Greek Revival home is a comfy place with plenty of wall space and added rooms for shows and classes.  Lots of folks scurry about, organizing those of us bringing stuff in for judging:   reviewing our forms, telling us where to go first, where to pay.  Wouldn’t you know it?  An Athens Banner-Herald reporter is standing by the front desk and asks whether he can interview me.  He actually prints what I say in Saturday’s  paper, although after the first sentence he changes my last name to the name of the judge!  (The article is below.)

When I tell him I am celebrating the gift of being alive-and-well at almost 75, one of the volunteers says she is a couple of years younger and is also thrilled to be alive because she was in a terrible accident.  Doctors said she would never walk again but here she is, standing and escorting me to the next table.  We have big smiles for each other.

I may be one of the few who is light-hearted and smiley.  My first experience with this sort of thing is definitely an adventure.   In the main gallery I whip out my camera and take photos like a gawking tourist.  Then I dance up the curving marble steps to the far room on the second floor.  A volunteer tell me to stack my pictures against the wall.   “Gosh, I hope I’ve used enough tape to stick my identification slips to the frame backs.”  (When the judge reviews all these gazillion pieces, he has no idea who has done them.)

Another Photo I Submitted

There is so little space left along the walls and this is only one room!  [This year’s entry total is 938.] The poor judge has to look carefully at all these.  I take one last look at it all, then walk slowly down the graceful steps with my empty garbage bag.

So that’s it?  Why do I feel a bit tenuous, off balance?  Because I see myself differently, as someone with a creative streak who is willing to be judged.  I don’t normally like being judged and here I am, asking for it.  But wait, I, as a being, am not being judged, right?  It is my work that is being judged.  Good grief, this is heavy cause I obviously equate my work with my essence.  

I see two friends on the first floor, which helps me feel more like myself.   I’ll tackle the heavy stuff like Who Am I? some other day when I am sitting alone by an ocean.   Now it’s time to go home and read up on requirements and procedures for the next show.   I’ll try some other venues with different photos…   

Here's part of the newspaper article, where the reporter confused my last name with that of the judge:

 "Hundreds of works submitted for Lyndon House Arts Center's annual juried exhibition"

By Jim Thompson updated Friday, January 29, 2016      

"Submissions to the 41st annual juried visual arts exhibition at Athens-Clarke County’s Lyndon House Arts Center were on a pace to break records Friday, with more than 200 artists having brought in many hundreds of works by noon, four hours before the two-day submission period closed."

"Throughout the center’s galleries Friday, Lyndon House staff and volunteers helped artists fill out the required paperwork and stack their works against walls and in other spaces throughout the building."  ...

 "During the rest of his time in town, Reynolds will be at the Lyndon House, looking through the hundreds of submissions — from sculpture to photographs — to select the works that will be displayed at the exhibition, scheduled for March 24 through May 7."
 
... "Lyndon House Arts Center’s juried exhibition is noteworthy because it is one of the few exhibitions for which the juror actually comes to the exhibit space, rather than simply reviewing digital images of the works sent to their computers."

"Among the works that Reynolds will review are three photographs taken by 74-year-old Rosemary Woodel, who was making her first submission to any artistic event on Friday."

“I’m a newbie in every way possible,” Reynolds said as she stopped among the tables spread around the arts center to accept submissions.

"Reynolds, who turns 75 on June 1, is doing a lot of things this year that are outside of her comfort zone, she said, as a means of “celebrating the gift of being three-quarters of a century old.”

"Reynolds said she only recently took up photography “in a serious way,” and finds herself spending a lot of time in the woods taking photographs. The three photographs she submitted for consideration are “more artistic, and less scientific” than her usual work, she said."

 Isn't that hysterical?