assignments and submissions
One key job of an artist is to click and submit their stuff. To format ten images, write several chunks of text describing why the ten shared images are incredible, remarkably weird or simply perfect.
Numerous art friends say never, never make work to fit a call for work. If you’re not an environmental artist don’t assemble work that leans into the topic just to fit the call. It is a contortion or at best a sort of fake. Irregardless, I’ve been know to do it anyway. Last year there was a call for PINK, a color I never, almost never bring into my work. I proceeded to source imagery from magazines and assembled a collage. However, before clicking to submit the work I learned that only pink paintings were being considered. For a moment I considered painting a dashed pink line over the surface, in order to qualify.
The moment passed and I moved on to the next assignment.
sometimes a submission is an assignment
There are times I really need an assignment. It can help me get out of the doldrums. A useful pivot away from bigger thematic projects. It is also a comfortable category of task, having been an educator for much of my life, crafting the next juicy assignment.
Call for entry: submit printed work
self assignment, part 1 -
Submit a printed work that makes a connection, in some way, to the fifteen recent wood block prints by Bay Area Printmaker, Toru Sugita that would be featured in the exhibition.
Artists were asked ‘to consider a foundational quality within printmaking; the path of craftsmanship; the skill, care, and personal intention an artist brings to the process; both in technique, and concept.’
This ask is a bit funny to me because printmakers, by nature are very process oriented, each gesture has a purpose and each tool leaves its unique mark. Papers are selected with love for their smoothness, tooth and fragility. So I begin to ask myself:
What is my craftsmanship and how does it relate to 15 woodblock prints that I have never seen but, can image?
I take great care with the conceptual underpinnings of any series of work. As a printmaker I prefer the loose painterly quality of monotypes over relief printmaking, intaglio or serigraph. The immediacy of crafting the mark making and how it translates from the plate to the page is more suited to how I have learned to negotiate my available energy, effectively fitting it with the process that holds the idea. The materials (paper and objects) are the storytellers, often holding deep personal meaning or proximity to my daily habits and paths taken.
I begin to consider work that I might submit, flipping through my archive, searching for a connection to the form and craftsmanship. While I am falling in love with some images I am struggling to find something that will fit in with size requirements. Submissions to group shows often indicate maximum framed dimensions and most of my pieces are larger or odd sizes requiring more expensive custom frames. Not entirely satisfied, instead to choosing previous work, I began to make new work. Selecting loose pages, fragments, and studies from previous exercises that have a graceful aesthetic - resonating with what I imagine any of the 15 wood block prints might also hold. The next step was to deconstruct and reassemble the work creating a new form. Instead of stopping after making one piece, I made five 12” x 12” collages.
composing, decomposing and rearranging
Now that I have work to submit to the exhibition I learn that there is a shortage of wall space and an abundance of pedestals and shelves for dimensional work including artists books so, I decide to continue to work.
self assignment, part 2 - give the flat page dimension
How can I bring shape to these pages? I do not find this to be a discouraging request or a particular challenge. If anything, I prefer a shaped page over a frame. I begin to consider the shapes that a square can take and begin to wonder how I might reference a secondary practice of craftsmanship, origami. I match opposite corners and fold, punch holes at the corners for fasteners to hold the shape in place.
I am pleased to see how the resulting side view effectively mimics a mountain.
assignment, part 3 - display
A plexiglass shell on top of a pedestal is much like glass in a frame, confining and distant. There may or may not be plexiglass covers so I needed to consider: How could I anchor and protect these paper forms, securing them from an occasional breeze?
assignment completed - submission accepted: Intention and Process
California Society of Printmakers at Diablo Valley College Art Gallery, 321 Golf Club Road, Pleasant Valley, CA. Dates: June 15–July 23, 2026