Prettiest Rejection

Dear Ms. Wiesblott,

Thank you for submitting your recent work to George Eastman House International Museum of Photography and Film. We welcome the opportunity to review your work, and appreciate your interest in the museum.

I am writing on behalf of Alison Nordstrom, Curator of Photographs, to inform you we are unable to accept work from your series for exhibition or inclusion into the permanent collection at this time. Our exhibition schedule for the next year is already in place, and we do not consider the work contextually suitable for our permanent collection. Please understand this decision is not a reflection on the quality or subject of your work but the result of our need to grow the collection in careful and particular ways.

We offer our thanks and encouragement, and hope you will continue to keep us up to date on new projects by reviewing www.geh.org for changes to our submission guidelines. Thank you again for your interest in the George Eastman House.

All best wishes,

Tasha Lutek,
Photograph Department Intern
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I am so happy they spelt my name right and looked at my work.

Meltdown in something else

So I was looking at the local artist union site last Friday and it lead to my computer having a TOTAL meltdown!

A whole weekend and several hundred dollars later I have a new computer system. Cooked my hard drive took over my system....it was a mess!

Good news: I was able to save all my files including my image files!

For the last couple of weeks I have been up to my ears in side projects,

• I set up a website for a fellow artist, Donna Carver
• I did a ton of inspection reports for my brothers machine shop
• I got my work space together and moved into
• I got another rejection letter

All this and barely any art making time for me, as I have been also setting personal goals.

Good thing: I sold these two pieces this last weekend, and plan a barter for another!

I tend to be motivated by deadlines, I like to plan to meet them. I am a list maker and LOVE to cross things off my lists. I have set some lofty goals for myself this month and only July knows what the rest of the days holds for me or my desires to be a productive artist.

Sometimes though....being an artist is not a switch that can easily turned on for production.

With all these goals I sometimes find myself on the patio eating huge amounts of watermelon wondering why I am not in the workroom making something!

Sometimes the stress of making is, well stressful!

I fight off thoughts of being a freeloader or a fake, just long enough to cross something else off my list.

Today I crossed off a daunting goal, I submitted work to the George Eastman House!

July is the only month that they accept unsolicited work, so even though I do not expect much...I had to check it off my list. Kind of like buying that lottery ticket. It is fun to feed into the fantasy.

By the time the work was all gathered, letter signed, statements and CV in order I was questioning the quality and strength of my work. Was I wasting someones time?

Needless to say, the envelope is in the mail and I have sent my hopes out into the universe.