I applied to an art fair in St. Charles IL for the first time. It had a deadline of Jan 15 and notification of Feb 1. I was wait listed. Now I see it is back up on ZAPP, with a new deadline of March 15?! What’s going on?
I have seen plenty of shows push back the deadline, but this? A new deadline a month and a half after notification? Since I never applied to this one before, I have no idea if this is what they normally do. I’ve heard of rolling juries, but there was nothing in the prospectus to lead me to think that this was a show that did that.
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While I do not condone this, some shows will reopen the application process to all but some categories because they don't have the quantity / quality artists they want in the others. Typically jewelry and photography are the ones excluded. I'd contact the organizer but that would be my guess.
I went back into ZAPP to see if there were any exclutions. As I had already applied, I couldn't see the drop down menu for media that is part of an application.
I'll just have to see if they answer me, but I still think a month and a half after notification is a bit much. I'm on zapp all the time, and sort by deadline. If it had been on there much before yesterday, I would have seen it.
They've removed watercolor and oils from the list, but fine art photography and fine art jewelry are still on the list of open media. That does beg the question if they had other categories of jewelry and photography, or if they are being very picky. Either way, it looks suspicious. The date is a popular one for many shows and they may be feeling the pinch for top flight artists. The other possibility is that the show is a dog and artists are staying away from it.
Thanks for checking for me, Robert.
The fees are on the expensive side, which has stopped me from applying in the past. But everything else on that weekend I’ve tried or just can’t crack (like Round the Fountain in Lafayette, which is a mystery to me : anything with only 3 to 1 odds I will at least get accepted to a couple of times). But this would be local for me, and worth the try.
My ESP is working…as I was typing a reply, I got a call from the director. They had re-opened the application so some of their long term artists could apply. She did not know it was visible to others. I don’t know myself if ZAPP even has that functionality. Nor does it explain why said long term artists missed the Jan 15 original deadline. I should have asked if it was grandfathered for those artists, but we had a bad connection with static and it was hard enough to communicate the essential facts. In a nut shell: it is not open for general applications.
Regarding Round the Fountain; I got into that one once, back about 8 years ago and haven't been able to crack it again. It beats the daylights out of me what they're looking for as I recall the photography was a lot of the National Park landscapes, row boats on quiet lakes, Tuscan landscapes, and the usual. Whenever I tried to go with my more creative satire pieces, I never got in with them or other shows.
I opened the application in ZAPP and it still had a few days open. If the show changed some dates, they may have missed some long term exhibitors. I went through that this spring when a show I've been in for over 20 years went to ZAPP for the first time. I missed the deadline and just happened to catch it a few minutes before midnight. I started on it but was frozen out. An email to the organizer was at first not helpful although they regretted the timing issue. They contacted me a few weeks later and let me run the application through again. I've noticed since then ZAPP is stricter on the midnight issue. For a long time, the applications would say midnight EST, but the reality was they were running on Mountain Time. Not anymore, that loophole has been closed.
I was curious, so I checked. The deadline has been close to the same that last few years. So I don’t know how somebody could be caught out. Well…unless they call me off the wait list, it’s moot.
I’ve noticed the same thing about the ZAPP deadlines. I was kind of casual about one, also having been on the fence about applying (which was why I had put it off) figuring it was a soft deadline, and so many get extended anyway. I was just about to pay, and got shut out.
UPDATE : Just got an email from them that told me I’m no longer on the wait list. My status on ZAPP has been changed accordingly. So, I infer, the new applicants (even though they did not want to apply with sufficient urgency to do so by the first deadline) were either accepted or waitlisted with more favorable scores than mine.
I’ve emailed to ask for a clarification of their policies. Normally I don’t persist like this. For a $ 35 jury fee, though, when it appears that policies differ from the norm, I’d like a bit more transparency.
Linnea
If you log in into Zapp and try to apply to that show it will tell your status. I was told by the director to apply to show because she did not understand why I stop doing the show and then I got reject it.
I really do not know what to tell you other that base on a rumor from Coconut Grove and Bayou it wont surprise me.