Learn how to find art opportunities, assemble your application, manage deadlines, and follow-up with ease. Image courtesy of Thomas Flynn II.
It’s amazing when you think about how many opportunities there are available for artists, created by a worldwide network of people who care about art and want to support the people who make it.
Exhibition open calls to share your work with new audiences. Residencies to deepen your practice and meet the peers who will inspire your next directions. Grants to fund a long-term project (or just buy supplies!).
Artists are lifelong learners, always open to new techniques or experiences that will expand their horizons.
But for every exciting opportunity you come across, there’s an application to get through.
That’s when artists scramble to find the image files from their project from two years ago ("were those on my Dropbox, or on that external hard drive I can’t find?").
That’s when artists look through their bios and project statements to try to find their most recent version (the dreaded “artist_statement_final_v2_FINAL!”).
That’s when artists start juggling multiple deadlines—and inevitably one falls through the cracks.
It doesn’t have to be this way. The application experts at Artwork Archive have created a simple, integrated workflow that guides you through the process of finding opportunities, assembling your materials, submitting your application, and following up on next steps. It’s a workflow that’s repeatable and sustainable. It’s a workflow that makes art applications easy—imagine that.
Let’s see how it works.
Step One: Finding the Right Artist Opportunities
Artwork Archive's Call for Entry Platform puts hundreds of opportunities at your fingertips.
Artist opportunities are everywhere: in newsletters that you have to track down, on organization websites that get updated infrequently, in social media posts that are easy to miss. To solve this problem, Artwork Archive created one consolidated Call for Entry landing page.
On the Call for Entry landing page, you can sort opportunities by deadline date, medium, opportunity type, location, and more.
You can slice and dice the hundreds of opportunities to find one that fits your practice and whatever stage you are in your art career. You can even just search for opportunities that are free to apply to.
The Artwork Archive team is constantly searching down the best opportunities, so new applications go live every week. Bookmark the landing page to check out new listings regularly, so you can find your next residency, grant, or exhibition opportunity.
Get The Best Art Opportunities Delivered Right To Your Inbox
When you sign up for the Artwork Archive newsletter, you’ll receive a monthly opportunity guide with the best residencies, grants, and fellowships with deadlines in the upcoming month, plus tips, resources, and stories from working artists just like you. Sign up today!
Step Two: Manage Your Entire Application Schedule—And Get Weekly Reminders
When you find an opportunity you want to apply to, just click the ”Add to Schedule” button. This adds the opportunity to your Schedule within Artwork Archive.
Your Schedule tracks all of your upcoming deadlines, along with general reminders you set for yourself (think: dates to send your newsletter, deadlines to file your quarterly taxes, anything you want to keep track of).
Your Schedule allows you to track all of your important at a glance, and if you set up weekly reminders in your Artwork Archive account, you’ll get a rundown of all your upcoming deadlines delivered to your inbox every week.
You can also click the calendar icon next to any deadline and sync that event with your Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, or Outlook Calendar accounts.
It's easy to sync your Artwork Archive events with your online calendar.
Step Three: Submit Your Art Application Materials With Ease
There's a secret when it comes to art opportunities: Though there may be a few questions unique to each application, almost every application will ask for the same key materials. Once you have those locked down and stored in your Artwork Archive account, you’re ready to apply to as many opportunities as you like.
Here’s where it gets interesting: a lot of organizations now run their calls through Artwork Archive’s Call for Entry Platform.
That means that for those calls you can apply directly with the materials that are already in your Artwork Archive account. No more re-sizing images to fit the opportunity’s custom dimensions and no more searching down lost artist statements, your materials are all easily accessible where you’ve organized them.
Finding Easy Apply listings is easy on the Artwork Archive Call for Entry landing page.
To find those opportunities, click the "EASY APPLICATION" button in the left-hand column of the Call for Entry landing page, or look for the “Submit with Artwork Archive” icon for opportunities that you can apply to directly through your account. Check out all the Easy Apply listings here.
What every art application asks for:
High Resolution Artwork Images: For every piece record you create in Artwork Archive, you upload an image of that artwork. Make sure the image is high quality and well lit: follow this free worksheet for tips on creating application-ready images. To use an image in an Artwork Archive Easy Application, just select the pieces from your Artwork Archive inventory and they’ll be automatically added to your application. You can also download the full-size images at any time.
Artwork Details: When submitting to an Artwork Archive Easy Application, all your artwork details—dimensions, medium, creation year, etc.—are automatically associated with the artworks. That saves you time on copy-and-pasting, or worse, tracking down information that you forgot to log in the first place!
Artist Statement, Artist Bio, or CV: Keeping track of your written documents is easy with My Docs in your Artwork Archive account. Simply upload your finished documents to My Docs and when you need them for an application they’ll be organized and easy to access. Make sure to use a file name that will make sense to you when you're searching for it later. Want expert guidance on assembling your artist documents? Check out Write Now: The Essential Writing Workshop for Artists.
Once you have those materials easily findable in your Artwork Archive account, applying for art opportunities becomes so much simpler. Add your artworks, select the Artist Statement or CV that you want to use, fill out any remaining questions from the organization, and hit submit!
Pro-Tip: Never Double-Book an Artwork Again
When your work is included in an exhibition, make sure to create an Exhibition record in your Artwork Archive account, and assign the accepted artworks to the Exhibition. You can log the drop-off dates, opening dates, and work pick-up dates to ensure that you don’t accidentally offer that work to another exhibition at the same time!
Your Art Inventory Is The Foundation For All Your Applications
Your art inventory is like the digital studio assistant you always wish you had. Image courtesy of Krista Reuter.
A robust art inventory is the key to making art applications easy.
When you know which pieces are available, when they were created, and what their dimensions are, it makes it so much easier to share that information with juries and curators.
When you know that your artwork images are easily findable—and integrated directly into your piece record—you never have to go digging through old hard drives, and you never have to think “is that the title I used last time for that piece?”
When you build your art inventory in Artwork Archive, you’re creating a living record of your entire art career. But the cool thing is that your inventory doesn’t just track your art practice, it makes it possible for you to start reaching for bigger new opportunities, and it allows you to start thinking of new horizons for your art practice.
When you feel confident in the business side of your practice, it no longer feels overwhelming to pull together applications and share your work with the world. Your work deserves to be seen, and your art inventory is the tool that makes that possible.
Remember: Keep Your Art Applications Sustainable
Image courtesy of Alana Walters.
Artists are passionate people, and we pour so much energy into our art practices. But the key to building a fulfilling and sustainable art career—and avoiding burnout—is to know our limits.
When it comes to art applications, try to avoid working in cycles of boom and bust, and avoid all-or-nothing thinking. It’s much better to finalize just one application than it is to be juggling 10 deadlines and miss all of them!
We recommend setting a regular schedule for yourself that is achievable. Instead of poring over hundreds of art opportunities once every couple months, set a reminder on your calendar to check for new opportunities each week. Pick a few that seem like good fits, and add them to your schedule. Give yourself plenty of time to assemble your materials, and aim to knock down however many opportunities are manageable for you each month.
That way, you’ll be receiving a steady stream of feedback, and over time, you’ll learn a thing or two about what makes your applications successful. As you start landing opportunities, add them to your CV and upload the updated version to My Docs.
Submitting applications on a slow and steady pace over a period of months and years have a way of building up your art practice in surprising ways.
With these easy steps, and a bit of luck, you’ll soon be landing those opportunities that allow you to take your practice even further.
Watch the Webinar: The Artist Opportunity Workflow That Makes Applications Easy
Are you ready to make applications... easy? Give Artwork Archive a try for free for 14 days and explore all the tools you need to scor your next art opportunity. A bit of structure now can mean more time and headspace for the work you actually want to be doing.
Artwork Archive helps artists build an online portfolio, stay on top of their inventory, and create documents like portfolios and consignment reports in just a few clicks. Start a free trial and see how it fits into your own process.
