Please note the new changes to the Membership Application Process as of 12/2008.
Application Process: Currently, we are NOT taking applications for membership on a rolling basis.
A jury processes the membership applications. The jury is comprised of fine art professionals with an occasional guest juror from within the Guild. Jury selection is at the sole discretion of the Director unless the Board of Directors chooses to impose certain limitations.
All activities of the group being secondary to the artifacts created by the members, the single most important criteria for membership is the compatibility of the work! Stronger works will weigh more heavily than weaker works. Please send at least 4 images of your work to the Jury Coordinator by emailing here. Send as many pieces and documents of presentation as you like. Also accepted with application are Artist Statements, Bio-Vitae, Curriculum Vitae, brochures, tags with logos, Artist Resumes, Press Packets, Bibliography and any other presentation material you would like to include. In other words, anything that will help market your work will be considered with your application. The jury would prefer to view the images as JPEGs, TIFFs or GIFs, likewise the documentation in common software such as MS Office products, or Adobe Acrobat, but if you find that too much of a technological challenge, please confer with the Jury Coordinator to see what we can work with. Many common programs might be available to use.
When you send images for the jury to consider, you retain copyrights to all of your work. No publishing will happen with your images that you do not approve of.
Be sure to include contact information with your application, please. All selected applicants will be contacted through the means offered by the artist applying. Note that the entry fee is due upon acceptance into the Guild.
If one is not inclined to email images and documentation, please inquire for a snail mail address.
Though quality of work far outweighs any other criteria, please include any suggestions you may have about what you would like to get out of the Guild and what you might like to contribute to it. Show your reason for interest in membership or mention a specific agenda you may have. A brief statement will suffice.
There are no commitments afforded necessarily, once one has become a member. There is no review of artists membership, once membership has been established.
A focal area of goals is to develop the market for fine art silk painters through collective ideas and organized participation. Essentially, we can share notes, critique each other, work on presentation and perform promotional activities. If this all interests you, you may care to apply. While all activity stems from there, there will be no rule that any member participates in any given activity. Unlike the original era of guilds in Europe, there is no force of coercion in holding a guild today. It is simply a place one may attain certain beneficial services by association.
This Guild is for Fine Artists. If the jury does not accept you, it may be because your work belongs in a different potential venue than the other work of Guild members. With a focus on the guild as a professional initiative, it is important to keep membership limited to certain goals. There have been several great silk painters whose membership was not accepted despite that they made great applications and are formidable artists. They simply belonged elsewhere. There are larger groups with more inclusive criteria for membership, some of which have significant benefits. If this one is not for you, try one of the others.
There have been small costs associated with running the organization. At times, these may be split among members.
At the time of publishing this web page, the cost of entering the Guild is one hundred United States dollars ($100 USD), not due until membership is offered through the Jury Selection Process and accepted by the Artist. This fee is not for creating you a web site, or any other service that may be offered at some time or to other existing members. This fee will simply allow your artistic entity to be included for consideration during the planning of artistic endeavors for the group, paying for the time it takes to organize your entity into the framework of the Guild.
Once you are officially a Member of the Silk Painters Guild for fine artists, your work is included for consideration in special projects being organized by members of the Guild. There may be exhibitions, writing exchanges, web pages, critiques, posting of your classes on the Guild's teaching web page, and/or other possibilities. As with any Guild, the more effort you put into it; the more you will get back from it.
Membership may be revoked at any time at the discretion of the Chairperson of the Guild and its Board of Directors. Membership may be revoked in the event that the Guild can not reach a member for an extended period of time over two years and expects to have no further dealings with said member, at the discretion of the Chairperson and the Board of Directors. The Chairperson makes the initial revokation, and in the event of an appeal, the Board of Directors takes a vote. Not all members who are out of touch, living in the wilds or gone to paint in Tahiti, so to speak, will have their membership revoked.
Duties of Members: Members are not held to perform particular duties unless they volunteer to do so.
Members are held to strict guidelines of producing great quality art and upholding the utmost respectable practices as artists.
Members are expected to be forthcoming with information in the event the Guild's members are material for publishing articles by the Guild for publicity and exhibition purposes
Members are encouraged to produce new gallery submissions for the web site at least once every five years.
These terms are subject to change without notice.
I look forward to hearing from you and looking at your work.
Chairperson, the Silk Painters Guild for fine artists
