For my day job, I work in the area known as “public sector,” which is to say, related to government — from local to federal. The last week of September marks the end of the year — the fiscal year — for the government, so there’s always a flurry of activity in the last quarter of the fiscal year, as our government officials dash to spend or encumber the funds for their budgets.
I realized today that this end-of-summer/start-of-autumn moment also feels like a more personal year’s end. I started off 2023 vowing not to answer as many calls for entry as the previous several years. I was going to “save” 2023 for the substantial work I still have to do for my two long-term projects, Wrought and My Life In A Dome. I had set my sights on landing my first solo show and to have at least a maquette prepared for one of the projects. Work has been progressing, albeit slower, as some submission opportunities kept appearing and I kept answering. My attention to the aspirations for a solo show and book created a separate “why not?” freedom to submit to the calls for entry that interested me.
The result has been — with one quarter of the calendar still to go — that I’ve had the opportunity to show more work this year than ever. And, right now, I have more work in more shows concurrently than ever — five. They are Angad Arts Hotel’s 8th Biannual, Heartland Art Club’s RepreSENSATIONAL, St. Louis Artists’ Guild’s Member’s Exhibition, Somerville Toy Camera Festival (Boston) and Art Saint Louis’ Creatures III.
I’ve also had works accepted into back-to-back exhibits at St. Louis Artist’s Guild and Art Saint Louis this year, and three published in print and online magazines. I won’t claim that this level of success was effortless, but it didn’t feel like nearly as much effort as having work accepted into just a single show 15 years ago.
I have feelings of both dread and gratitude, the former because I worry how I could ever top this year and the latter because I just have to make the work while others have to acknowledge and choose it. I feel like that Sinatra song “It Was A Very Good Year.” That sentiment is true whether I have any more work accepted (there’s a few calls for entry still hanging out there) until 2024.
I suppose this is either a harbinger of things to come or my swan song. Either way, I’ll keep making more photographs and enjoy this moment with true gratitude.