I’ve been reading various blogs and lists and their mentions of the Quilt National entry process. This is year one of an all-digital entry process for QN and I thought it was a little klunky but nothing terrible. Create a log in, verify via email, type in your info, upload two photos and pay via credit.
Apparently if you submitted more than one entry, you had to type in info, upload and pay for each.
LOL forgive me for laughing over all this. So apparently, being inclined to be lazy, I just naturally took the easy route and as I normally do I entered only one work. Hence no whining here.
Meanwhile the Studio Art Quilt people are all in a tizzy over setting auction minimums for donated work. I get it. But with any gift you have to let go. I think you could say – I’d be glad to donate a piece which would retail for $ZZZ would that be in your target market price for your buyers? Or to ask, what sort of price range do your donated pieces generally sell for? If it’s not a good fit, it’s probably better for both sides to decline.
And meanwhile, that same group is doing their yearly auction of very small quilts that are made by members. It’s a reverse auction that steps down from a higher price to a lower one so you need to put your money down as soon as the price gets to what you will pay. Pieces made by “known” quilters get snatched up at the highest prices and eventually the few remaining unsold are put into the online store for future sales.
The thing about this auction that bothers me is that it’s so in-house. Despite the goal of the organization to increase the visibility of the “art quilt” in the world, most of these pieces are purchased by people already in the organization, not outside art fanciers. For some reason they indicate via asterisks how many years the makers have donated work to the auction.
I look at the pieces every year and think it would be interesting, since it’s so internal, to do it blind: without maker name revealed. I think most of the early, higher priced sales would be the same but some of the others might go earlier too. Maybe not. Just mho.
