NEWS

Jeff Harrison, Chief Curator Emeritus for the Chrysler Museum, calls the show critical for artists who don’t often have the opportunity to have their work critiqued.

The arts are “incredibly crucial” to life today, whether it’s simply being alive in the world or being culturally aware in your environment, Jeff Harrison, Chief Curator Emeritus for the esteemed Chrysler Museum in Norfolk said this week, calling on all artists in the mid-Atlantic region to participate in the Gloucester Arts Festival 2018 Juried Show.

“The arts are a fundamental part of the human condition and shows like the one in Gloucester are absolutely critical to practicing artists who don’t get many opportunities to show their work, or have their work critiqued,” Harrison said.

The Gloucester Arts Festival continues to accept submissions for its 2018 Juried Show, a unique opportunity for artists across the mid-Atlantic to curate their own show and earn a share of more than $5,000 in prize money as judged by Harrison.

The Gloucester Arts Festival 2018 Juried Show is open to artists 18 and older who live within the mid-Atlantic states of Virginia, North Carolina, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, Delaware and Washington DC.

The deadline to apply is Friday, April 6 by 11:59 p.m. and artists will be notified of their acceptance by April 24. Entry fee is $40.

Juried shows, like the Gloucester Arts Festival, are particularly good for artists living and working outside of metropolitan areas who don’t have as much opportunity to get feedback on their work, Harrison said.

“Artists are extremely eager to have feedback,” Harrison said. “I make a point of doing that.”

Harrison also makes a point of getting to know the artists.

“Considering all of the artists I studied were dead, I never got to talk to them or ask them what they are doing,” Harrison said. “It’s wonderful to get to talk to practicing artists, living artists, and engage with them on their processes and how they do what they do.”

The benefits of the Gloucester Arts Festival, Harrison pointed out, enriches not only the artists and collectors who purchase their works, but also the entire community.

“Bringing art into the daily lives of community members gets them focused on a larger world,” Harrison said. “It can only have positive and long term effects. It can spur individual interest in the arts as well as in the community.”

For artists still on the fence about whether to enter the Gloucester Arts Festival 2018 Juried Show, Harrison said go for it. Use this as an opportunity to expand your audience, expand your commercial reach and engage other communities.

“Shows like this are great for building reputation, building client base and generally engaging with the community,” Harrison said.

In his judging, Harrison said he will be looking for a variety of things from the artists.

“I look for technical expertise,” Harrison said. That is, “looking for the sign that the artist has mastered the tools of his medium – painting or sculpture or whatever. I look for a qualitative excellence, how they are handling their brush, for instance.”

He also looks for wit, for intelligence, in design.

“It can be in composition or something that shows the artist has really thought through what they are presenting and how they are presenting it,” Harrison said. “It can be visual or mechanical intelligence, use of color in photography or painting, all of those things.”

Being a traditionalist, Harrison said he also tends to look for works of art “that seem to me to be rooted in a deeper tradition. That doesn’t mean someone working as a pure abstractionist is off the hook. I’m looking to see that an artist has taken a look back in their genre and is responding to that.”

Artists will be juried into the show with digital images of two-dimensional work – acrylic, charcoal, colored pencil, encaustic, fiber art, graphite, mixed media, oil, original pen and ink, original print, pastel, tempera and watercolor – completed in the last two years.

For submission guidelines and to apply to the Gloucester Arts Festival 2018 Juried Show, visit gloucesterartsfestival.com.

ABOUT THE GLOUCESTER ARTS FESTIVAL 2018 JURIED SHOW

The Gloucester Arts Festival continues to accept submissions for its 2018 Juried Show, a unique opportunity for artists across the mid-Atlantic to curate their own show and earn a share of more than $5,000 in prize money as judged by Harrison.

The Arts Festival 2018 Juried Show is open to artists 18 and older who live within the mid-Atlantic states of Virginia, North Carolina, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New Jersey, Delaware and Washington DC.

For submission guidelines and to apply, visit gloucesterartsfestival.com.

The deadline to apply is Friday, April 6 by 11:59 p.m. and artists will be notified of their acceptance by April 24. Entry fee is $40.

The exhibition will take place June 1-30, 2018 at Arts on Main, with an opening reception on June 1 from 6 to 8 p.m.

Prizes, sponsored by the Cook Foundation, include the following:

• One Best Body of Work: $2,000 and a solo show at Arts on Main
• Three Awards of Excellence: $1,000 each
• One People’s Choice: $250.

The 2018 Gloucester Arts Festival will also include two plein air events open to all artists. A Symphony Nocturne Paint Out will take place at Gloucester’s annual Virginia Symphony outdoor concert on June 2 and a Small Painting Sunday will be held on June 3.

Works from the plein air event will be displayed at the Stewart Gallery on Main Street in Gloucester.

Learn more about the Stewart Gallery at stewartgalleryonmain.com, Arts on Main at gloucesterarts.org and the Cook Foundation at thecookfoundation.org.

ABOUT JEFF HARRISON 

Jefferson Harrison earned his B.A. degree in English literature (with honors; Phi Beta Kappa) and the Ph.D. degree in the history of art from the University of Virginia, where he completed his doctoral dissertation on the paintings of the 16th-century Netherlandish painter Maerten van Heemskerck. His dissertation research was facilitated by fellowships from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation in New York, which allowed him to study at the Art History Institute at the University of Amsterdam in 1976-78, and by the David E. Finley Fellowship, National Gallery of Art, Washington. D.C. (1979-82).

Harrison began work at the Chrysler Museum of Art in 1982, when he was hired to research its European collection. He was made the Museum’s research curator in 1986 and its curator of European art in 1989. From 1993 he served as the Museum’s chief curator, and in 2014 he was named the Irene Leache Curator of European Art. He organized and curated scores of exhibitions during his 33 years at the Chrysler, from Rembrandt and the Golden Age to Norman Rockwell — and he published numerous books and articles on the Museum’s permanent collection and on 16th-century Netherlandish art. His most recent publication, American Art in the Chrysler Museum, appeared in 2005, and in 2008 he completed the reinstallation of the Museum’s Joan P. Brock Galleries of early 19th-century American and European art. Harrison was part of the team leading the expansion and reinstallation of the Chrysler, which reopened in May 2014.

Harrison retired from the Chrysler in June 2015 with the title of Chief Curator Emeritus.