First off, I feel like Michael Corleone in the movie The Godfather: Part III … “Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in”. Artists keep asking me, “Why don’t you like ArtFields?” “What have you got against ArtFields?” and “Why do you keep picking on ArtFields”. But, those artists should know there are just as many artists telling me, “Never again, I’m through!” “Rip them another one – it’s all rigged.” And, one that dates back to the beginning question of ArtFields, “Why would I want to show my work in Lake City?” They are all valid questions and I’ll try to address them once and for all or until the next time the folks presenting ArtFields say something outlandish about their event.
Much like Donald J. Trump, the folks in Lake City, SC, have a bad habit of using hyperbole to describe their festival – ArtFields. It was “Epic” in its first couple of years, it had awards that were “life changing”, and in it’s first year attracted 22,000 visitors – to a town with a population of 6,000. Last year, ArtFields tried to claim that one of their new venues was the largest art venue in South Carolina when it wasn’t even the largest art venue in the county they are in. This year on Facebook they were claiming that their nine day visual art event was the largest art event taking place in the South, I had a few words to say about that in my May commentary in Carolina Arts and I’ll say it again here – Spoleto Festival USA and Piccolo Spoleto Festival are the largest art events taking place in South Carolina. And then I Googled – large art events in the South – Art Basel in Miami, FL, came up first, which I’m guessing is still in the South.
That entry said, “At the nexus of North America and Latin America, Art Basel in Miami Beach presents artworks from across the globe. Over 250 of the world’s leading galleries participate drawing over 70,000 visitors each year, offering an exciting and inspiring week for artists, collectors, curators, critics and art enthusiasts. In 2018, over $100,000,000 worth of artworks sold.” Hey Lake City, does that sound bigger than ArtFields?
So, here’s the thing, as long as they keep trying to boast about things they can’t backup – I’m going to show our readers the truth about their boasts. I think as Editor and Publisher of Carolina Arts, I have a duty to not let them get away with saying such stuff without questioning it. And, yes I’ll admit at one time I was a big cheerleader for ArtFields. I felt it was doing a great thing for a small city in the middle of nowhere in South Carolina. A great thing offering such an opportunity for visual artists in the Carolinas and 10 other States in the Southeast. I still do, but ArtFields has big problems – problems they don’t want to confront. And, it seems they have to find a new director every year. That should tell you something.
This installation was by Jin Arendt from the 2015 ArtFields. Arendt was the Top Prize winner in 2013.
I called Spoleto on their claim that they attracted 100,000 people to their festival every year – it was more like 40,000 or 50,000 at best and could be lower. So I’m not just picking on ArtFields. Spoleto only sold 40,000 individual tickets the year I called their box office. And nothing at Spoleto is free. But Spoleto knew if you can get the media to bite on what you offer them once – they’ll keep repeating it.
I’ll also admit that after the 2016 ArtFields I no longer attend the event which is just 52 miles up Hwy. 52 from the headquarters of Shoestring Publishing on Lake Moultrie, a place that has a real lake. Have you found the lake that Lake City is named after yet? Good luck. I learn about ArtFields from artists, my Google Alerts, Facebook posts, and by reviewing the ArtFields’ website. I do a lot of work and research to be able to make these comments.
And, speaking of Google Alerts – I have one on the word “ArtFields” so Google will alert me every time the word is mentioned in a news article and I can tell you, it’s not mentioned very much outside of Florence County in SC – not for the “largest art event taking place in the South”. And, these days I don’t see a lot of chatter on Facebook from artists who made the cut into the exhibit or ArtFields itself which only seems to offer posts when the event is a few weeks away. In the beginning it was a big deal on Facebook where artists were bragging about getting in and showing their works at ArtFields – no more. The Florence Morning News is ArtFields’ largest producer of publicity, which is a problem in itself. They have been offering little stories about ArtFields, as they should, but they have also been highlighting different SC artists on a daily basis just before and during the event. On Apr. 22, 2019, they did a feature on Charles Clary from Conway, SC, who won the top $50,000 award in 2016. He just happened to win one of the People’s Choice awards this year. I wonder how artists from the other 11 States feel about the major local paper highlighting local artists? Having won the top prize already I’m not sure he needed the boost.
The Florence Morning News offered an article about ArtFields on Apr. 30, 2019, titled, “Creative work drawing attention at Lake City event.” The article featured one of the new businesses displaying artwork for ArtFields, Miles of Style salon on Sauls Street. Owner Milton Miles said several hundred people have been in his shop since opening on Friday (Apr. 26). (That article was offered after the first weekend.) He went on to say, “We anticipate 25,000 to come through before the end of the show”. That would mean 24,800 would have to arrive in the next six days – that’s over 4,100 every day. They had some weather problems on the last weekend and not too many people go during the week, but they could have bussed in every school child from Florence County into Lake City during the week, but I don’t think those are the kind of visitors Mr. Miles was anticipating.
This shows work by Mark Flowers (L) and Eva Carter (R) from the 2015 ArtFields.
Another problem ArtFields has is the fact that most of the artists in their competition were coming from South Carolina. In 2017, 253 were from SC – that was 60% of the competing artists. After the 2018 ArtFields the event really had an image problem – all four top winners were from South Carolina and artists from SC won most of the other awards that year. That year their director was from Columbia, SC, who owned a commercial art gallery and ran another non-profit art space. The top $50,000 winner in 2018 was an artist from his gallery and a few others (3) winners were too. It just looked bad and to a lot of other artists smelled bad. It’s not hard to understand why the People’s Choice Awards have usually gone to a SC artist – most of the people who go see this show are from South Carolina. But this clean sweep was a bad sign for ArtFields – as far as attracting artists from other States. Changes had to be made.
How was ArtFields going to get more artists from outside SC to enter this show? One way was to give each State an award, so at least one artist entered from one of the 12 States would get an award. I wonder if they flipped a coin to decide the Arkansas winner as there were only two entries from Arkansas this year, and 5 of the 12 States had under 10 entries which made the odds good for those artists. Which will help in getting a few more entries each year from each State. But we’ll see if that changes the numbers from the 6 States which haven’t seen many entries – some of the problem is because of the distance those States are from SC. Of course there is always UPS, but they can’t deliver and set up an installation – which is what the last two top awards have been.
But something else seems to have gone on in 2019. Only two artists from SC won awards – one a People’s Choice Award (Duh) and the other the State Award. And the number of artists in the show from SC were still in the majority. And, in 2019, there were only 119 artist from SC in the exhibition. That’s a dramatic drop from 2017. I didn’t get a chance to check out the 2018 breakdown of where the artists were from as I was recovering from cancer. It would seem that in 2019 the organizers and jurors were trying to correct the “mistake” or image problem of 2018. They hired a curator from Alabama to recruit more artists and it worked – they got 26 entries from Alabama in 2019 compared to 7 in 2017, but at what cost? I’m sure the two from Arkansas won’t be telling any other artists about ArtFields – they want to keep those 50/50 odds going.
This work is by Patrick Parise from the 2014 ArtFields.
But there are other problems – as I said before, less and less artists from SC are entering or getting in – why that is, your guess is as good as mine as ArtFields no longer gives up info on how many artists applied. Since in 2019, they only showed 352 in their artist’s gallery – not the 400 they keep saying in press releases – for all we know all who enter are now making the cut. I wonder how many entered from Arkansas? And, I’ll say this one more time – nobody on the selection panel or the jury panel should be from the 12 States in the competition.
No artist from any of the 12 States should be on either panel. I was shocked to see last year’s top winner on the jury panel. They can get these people from lots of other states. Curators, administrators, and artists from these 12 States know too many artists that they might favor. Curators make artists famous so they can build up their own standing in the art community. No curators should be involved from the 12 States. I don’t know how many times I have to say that and they should have learned this lesson from past people they have brought in to “help” ArtFields and those people ended up helping themselves and their artists friends. Artists are not blind – they see this stuff too and that’s why fewer and fewer artists you might see in Carolina Arts – artists who are having exhibits in galleries and art spaces are not entering ArtFields anymore.
This work is by Kirkland Smith from the 2013 ArtFields. It was the People’s Choice winner, after the top voted work was disqualified.
And let me say one more thing. How many elections where people vote to select a winner do you know, but you are never told how many votes the “so called” winners got? Think about it. Let’s say after the 2016 election the Obama Administration just came out and said Hillary won. How would that go over? From the beginning, ArtFields has never told how many votes the People’s Choice award gets or how many votes the top winners got. This they feel is none of our business. I don’t really care if the total isn’t very big – it might look bad to ArtFields – but as long as the winner got more than any one else. Why hide this info? Well, one reason is it could reveal several things. When you say 22,000 people attended but only 5,000 registered to vote and then only 2,500 vote, one might wonder if 22,000 really did attend the event. It might not look good if the People’s Choice winner got less than 50 votes, but spread between 400 or 350 artworks that could be 12.5 to 14.2 votes per artist if all artists got votes from 5,000 voters only voting for one artwork as their favorite. So it’s possible that the winner could have gotten under 50 votes. That just looks bad when you’re saying 22,000 are coming to your event which has a major component of voting for your favorite artworks. And remember registered voters can vote for more than one artwork, so the average could go up to 50 or 60 or more, but it still looks bad compared to 22,000 people ArtFields said came and saw the art one year. But then again Americans and especially people from South Carolina don’t think voting in elections is that big a deal.
At first, ArtFields encouraged artists to campaign for votes, but now they have banned that. Perhaps some of those artists who camped out in Lake City for a week or more didn’t understand how all those people who they thought would vote for them didn’t or it wasn’t enough votes. And, they may have wanted to know how their work at campaigning and hanging around Lake City paid off by wanting to know how many votes they got. I think every artists who gets in this show should be able to know what the public thought of their work by knowing how many votes they got. But if you were an artist from Arkansas, you either won or lost – it was a 50/50 thing – a toss of a coin. How many votes you got didn’t matter if you were from Arkansas. But I wonder how much time the jury panel spent in deciding that pick. And, I wonder how the jury panel keep track of which works of art they saw were from which State in order to pick those State awards? Looking at 400 works or 350 this year would just give me a migraine headache. The SC State Fair art show does that to me every time I go see it.
I wonder how a lot of things work behind the scenes at ArtFields, but I’m not losing any sleep over it and I wish artists would just decide if they want to play along or not. If I was an artist, I probably wouldn’t, even if there was a chance that I could win $50,000, but I don’t buy lottery tickets either.
This was a work by Jonathan Brilliant from the 2013 ArtFields. This work was not in the competition, it was a paid work to be on display.
Now, when it comes to the art that is selected each year, I don’t care about that like some folks do – I never agree with any results of a juried show when I see all the works in the exhibit, so it doesn’t matter much to me. And none of it is going to hang in my house – although I would like some of it. You have to remember it’s just a big juried show with a lot of money up for grabs. You don’t know if better works were entered but were not the selection panel’s cup of tea, and you could have another jury panel come in the next day and they would pick a whole different batch or works as winners. Heck, you could have the same jury panel come in a week later and they would pick different winners – it’s like the lottery. You have to buy a ticket to play, you won’t win very often, if at all, but you might – it’s what keeps you buying those tickets. A lot of artists who are at the top of their game don’t like taking those kind of chances – they like a sure thing. That why ArtFields from the start has paid some artists to display their works during their event. Not in the competition, that would be unfair, but their works are on display around town.
That’s my opinion – take it or leave it.
P.S. The photos are just of works I liked and had in my files.