I have received enough rejection letters to wallpaper my hall. Nowadays many places don’t even bother to send a formal letter on nice stationery, preferring a quick email instead. No matter the delivery, rejection is always a blow to the ego. The words kind of blur a bit after that first sentence, as you prepare yourself for the rest of the correspondence. Thanks for entering, the level of work was high, but you didn’t win…again. Rats. I didn’t win the Aperture Competition…again. (A girl can dream, can’t she?) Purdue University also turned me down recently.
Sometimes I make myself feel better with a few choice words and a hand gesture. Others I treat with a big fat glass of wine. A younger me might have tried tears. Occasionally, I’m grown up enough to reconsider my entry. Was it my best work? Did I describe it well in my artist’s statement. Or, was my work okay, but the winner’s soooo much better. (As is always the case in the Aperture Competition, which actually makes me feel better about losing. It reminds me to work harder and try again.) Don’t know who won the Purdue show, but suspect it’s that sort of avant garde/Whitney Biennial kind of art.
My yoga teacher would say to take a deep breath. Sometimes it works. What’s your remedy?
The second place winner was: Dave Clarke of Scotland with an outstanding black-and-white image.
