Newton Community Pride is recruiting artists for next year’s FenceART project. Artists who currently reside, work, volunteer, worship, or participate in art classes in the City of Newton are invited to submit 3 JPG images of their work by December 1. The works may be in any media, including but not limited to photography, painting, quilting, collage, and photos of 3D work. Artists accepted in any year must skip one year before applying again.
FenceART is a year-round public art project, dedicated to bringing vibrant, varied, and engaging art to neighborhoods throughout Newton. Each year, a jury selects 20 works by Newton artists, embracing a broad range of styles and media, for printing on high-quality vinyl banners. The banners rotate in small groups among five publicly accessible fence locations, for approximately 8-10 weeks at a time. Over the year, all 20 works are shown at all 5 locations. The locations are chosen to engage varied demographics, in a range of neighborhoods. Each banner group contains diverse media and styles, to interest viewers with widely varied artistic preferences.
Artist volunteers help run the project. The budget is funded by local grants, and locations are permitted. In 2022, FenceART is funded in part by a grant from the Newton Cultural Council, and Newton Community Pride acts as Fiscal Agent.
Attribution: Artist name, image title, and artist website will be included on the banner by the signage team. Other than a signature that may already be included on the original artwork, please leave attribution to the signage team.
Timeline
— Deadline for submission is Wednesday December 1, 2022.
— Accepted artists will be contacted by Friday, December 10, 2022.
— Accepted artist list will be published on the FenceART facebook page by Friday, December 10, 2022.
— Banners go into rotation in February 2023 and remain in rotation for approximately one year.
Image Requirements
— Please do not enlarge images before submitting.
— Do submit the largest version of the image that you have. Our team will enlarge as needed.
— Image files must be JPEGs, and may be up to 10 meg.
— Submit images that are crisply in-focus. The better the details look, the better it will work as an enlarged banner.
— While our optimal size for printing is 4000 to 7200 pixels in the wider direction, we have had good results with smaller images — we will tell you if we have a problem with the size of your file.
— Do not submit images with digital watermarks.
— How to Photograph Your Artwork For Best Results,* see below
If you have any questions about images sizes or photographing work, please contact Ellen Fisher at Ellen@Ellen-fisher.com.
Submitting
When submitting, please tell us you learned about this call for artists from Fig City News!
— Submit up to 3 images. Each image may be up to 10 meg in file size.
— Submit images by email with a subject line of “Newton FenceArt Submission” to Ellen@Ellen-fisher.com
— To prevent your email program from shrinking the image files, attach images as “actual size” or in a zip file. If your email program suggests sending via icloud, that’s a fine option.
— Submissions will receive an acknowledgement email reply within 24 hours on business days (it’s not automated). If you do not receive an acknowledgement email, please send an inquiry email without jpegs attached, so we can diagnose why the email failed to reach us.
— Artists whose work is chosen give FenceART permission to use the image in promotional materials.
— Questions? Contact FenceART Curator Ellen Fisher, Ellen@Ellen-fisher.com
How to Photograph Your Artwork For Best Results
— Cloudy outdoor lighting is your best/easiest option. A covered porch or positioning near a large window can work well.
— Photograph 2D work with the camera (or phone) at the same angle as the artwork: If the work is leaning against a wall, lean the camera to the same angle. In the viewfinder, if the work looks larger on one side, or at the top or bottom, your camera is not at the correct angle. The work should look “square” to all four edges of the viewfinder.
— When using a phone to photograph, always check the image on a computer or other larger screen, to make sure it really is crisp. Using a good camera is your best bet, but we do understand that many people depend on their phones now to take photos of their artwork.
— See these websites for tips: https://vimeo.com/20503333 and https://theartleague.org/blog/2015/08/13/the-zero-budget-guide-to-photographing-artwork
— If you are using your phone, don’t worry about the references to camera settings. The rest of the info about lighting, turning off your flash, camera angle etc., are still very relevant.
