Feeling rejected

I've been on the receiving end of quite a few rejections these past few months.  By rejections, I mean rejections from juried fiber art shows into which I've entered my fiber art creations.  In a juried show, an entrant's work must make it past one or more jurors in order to hang in the show.  I know that entering juried shows is a crapshoot.

But I think they're shooting me more than my share of crap lately. 

This calendar year alone, for example, my art has been rejected from:
 1.  The national Fiber Directions exhibition in Wichita, Kansas:     http://www.wcfta.com/images/FiberProspectus_2013.pdf

The juror for that show rejected these pieces:

Jack O'Lantern Mushrooms

Serious Sushi

Dog in Eel Grass, which is made with hair from my dogs

2. The Visual Symphony, a musically-inspired art exhibition at the Lazarus Gallery of United Hebrew of New Rochelle:  http://www.newrochellearts.org/calendar_detail.php?cal=1287
The juror for that show rejected this piece, Thus Spake Zarathustra, which just last summer was juried into Art Quilts Lowell 2012, a venue of the Lowell Quilt Festival:

3.  The 102nd annual exhibition of the Connecticut Academy of Fine Arts http://ctacademy.org/.   

The Connecticut Academy chose my work in 2010 and 2011, but not in 2012 and now 2013.  The juror for that show rejected these pieces:

Two Ways of Looking at Seaside Goldenrod, a piece that won second prize in the West Hartford Art League's 2012 Juried Show

Deconstruction, a look at the destruction wrought by squirrels on the cones of a Norway spruce in my yard

and most lately and most hurtfully:

4.  Local Color, an exhibition sponsored by the Connecticut affiliate of SAQA, the Studio Art Quilt Association, of which I am a member.  This rejection is particularly galling because I'm currently working with a small group of folks to bring this traveling show to the Legislative Office Building, an impressive space in Hartford.

The Local Color jurors for that exhibition rejected these pieces:

The Charter Oak, based on the painting by Frederic Edwin Church.  This one even has an image of the Connecticut State Seal on the back, including the state motto, Qui Transtulit Sustinet.  Does this not qualify as local color?

Seeking a Path, an image of a trail at Connecticut's Penwood State Park.  Is not an image from a state park an example of local color?  To qualify this one as a quilt, in case a juror had a doubt, I added a great deal of free-motion quilting to the back.  Of course, the jurors couldn't see that.  But you can:

Fall Picnic II, an image of the picnic ground at Penwood State Park in the fall.  This one uses woven squares I made at age 13 and never assembled into an afghan.  You can see them, green and brown, behind the felted image of the picnic area. It cracks me up that I still like the same colors at age 63 that I did at age 13. To qualify this one as a quilt, I painted quilt batting and applied it beneath the quilted piece but on top of the woven afghan squares.  No doubt the judges couldn't tell it was quilt batting.  If they could, would it have made a difference?

It's true, ladies and gentlemen, all this rejection.

In the interest of full disclosure, I have to say that I also, during these first few months of 2013, I had not one but two solo shows, had work received into one juried show, and sold a significant piece of art.  

Still, rejection hurts, and I'm sulking.

I'm also regrouping and considering what, if anything, to do next.

At least I can say that I finished my first sock today: