The Judges Have Spoken

About a month ago I got the word that I was not chosen to receive a state arts fellowship.  I decided to take them up on the offer of seeing the comments from the jurying panel regarding my entries.  The last time that they actually held the competition (at least twice they have collected the applications and then decided that they didn't have the money to do the program) I had requested the juror comments but they claimed they couldn't find them.  There's a long history of weird things going down with this competition.

This time they did find the comments for my entry.  Back in the 90's they used to give you the specific scores from each juror, and sometimes even where that ranked you in your category.  Some suspicious actions and procedures were hinted at by these numbers, so maybe that's why they don't let us see them anymore.  Anyway, this year's comments were generally positive.  Includes things like "beautiful compact narratives in single or duplex frame", "clever imagery, clean look".  One person specified, "appreciate the complexity of #8 [History of Art]", while another stated, "[21st Century] Employee piece is weak and overworked."  I don't know how far this put me away from the six who got fellowships, just that I got shut out once again.  See you again in a few years.