Spectrum 23 Judging Event is This Weekend!

The Spectrum 23 jury will be arriving in Santa Cruz, California on Friday evening in preparation for the judging event that will be held on Saturday, February 27th. This includes David Palumbo, Cynthia Sheppard, Kirk Thatcher, Charlie Wen and Terryl Whitlatch!

My office manager Keith and I will be taking pictures and video footage all weekend and sharing imagery during the process. Check back here on Saturday afternoon.

The Spectrum 23 submissions are ready to be viewed by the judges. Over these last few weeks it’s been a lengthy process to review the art. This involves double checking the artworks against the entry forms. If there is anything unclear we would contact the artist or representative for clarification. Most importantly we want to make sure the digital art file or print is clear and looks it’s best for review by the jury this weekend.

At this moment all of the artwork is separated by category. The jury will be arriving Friday afternoon. Just one of the many aspects that make the Spectrum judging process unique is that we bring the jury together to one location where they vote on the works that go in the book. Each vote is anonymous. A majority of three or more votes secures the placement of a given work within the pages of Spectrum. Discussion between the artists while they are casting their votes is discouraged. I instill the sense of fairness with the jury from the start. It’s the work, and its ability to jump out and engage the jury to vote for it that is paramount. The names of the artists are not shared and the jury is asked to set aside any personal friendships with fellow artists to vote purely on the quality of the works.

In most cases the judges that I pull together are people who do not know each other personally. They also tend to be people who I do not know closely. What this does is to guarantee as wide a breath of selections while preventing favoritism. Again, it gets back to the process being a fair one where all artists have an equal chance of being seen by the jury.

Once the individual judging has finished, we pull together the works that have been earmarked for award considerations. Each judge is asked to select at least one piece that displays a marked extra quality to share with the others during the awards discussions. All in all, a typical batch for discussion can be from 10 to 30 pieces for each category. This is when the jury is encouraged to openly discuss their case for certain works for receiving the silver or gold awards. Generally the jury is cordial, listens to each others thoughts and votes to a group consensus. My role is as a fly on a wall to mark those works that become nominations and award recipients. I do not encourage that they vote for any particular works or discuss the merits of any artists. This is for the jury to determine alone without any outside influence.

We will be taking pictures and video throughout the weekend. We will post them here on my blog and on the spectrumfantasticart.com website during the days following the judging event.

My first goal will be to post the nominees for consideration for awards, followed by tallying the votes to produce the list of artist’s names whose works were selected.

I’m very excited for this weekend. The five judges are exceptional professionals in the field. It’s my honor to host the Spectrum 23 judging event.

Good luck to everyone who submitted!

Enjoy,

John

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