Drawing for site specific proposals: Part three

Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Drawing for L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped 

The Smack Mellon gallery in New York is interested in site specific proposals that consider the unusual architecture of the gallery space. These proposals can be considered for any show at Smack Mellon and perhaps most interestingly for readers of this blog, only artists who do not have commercial gallery representation in New York will be considered.

Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the ability of the gallery to continue doing this is threatened, but their guidelines for proposals still exist, and it is useful to go through them if you are ever thinking of putting a proposal together for this gallery or any other site. 

Smack Mellon guidelines for site specific proposals

1. Work Samples
Six (6) images and/or three (3) videos that are representative of your artistic career. Images should be saved as .jpeg or .tiff.  Videos should be no longer than 3 minutes each and cued to the appropriate segment for the panel to review. Please number each work sample file to correspond to the work sample list.

Nb. Photographing and videoing your work is standard practice now and work needs to be composed and shot very carefully in order to communicate the best of your practice. The need to cue the video up is because they will have lots to look at and cant spend time scrolling through looking for best bits. (Something to remember when submitting work for assessment too)

2. Work Sample List
Numbers on the work sample list should correspond with the numbers in the work sample file names.
For Images: Include the title, date, medium, dimensions, and a brief description of the work (less than 100 words). For Video: Include title, date, duration, and a brief description of the work (less than 100 words).

Do remember to do this. Most residences, gallery proposals etc. stipulate how they want files to be named. 

3. Resume
Please include your name, address, phone number, and email address along with exhibition and educational background. Artists must not be represented by a commercial gallery in New York.

4. Artists’ Statement
In 250 words or less, write a statement about your work in general and your process.

You can get lots of advice on artist's statements, e.g. this one from the Artist's League. However the specific request here is to include 'process'. How do you go about making art in response to considerations about site specificity. This is a general statement about your process and is different to 'The Site Specific Statement', which is set out at point 5 below.

5. Site-Specific Statement with a description of the proposed work and an explanation of the idea and how it relates to the space. You may submit a proposal for either Gallery One (the large space) or Gallery Two (the smaller space). Your proposed project cannot take up both spaces.

Remember the physical location and surroundings of a proposed artwork are inseparable from its meaning. This might also include the historical significance of the site or past changes of use. You will need to show how this different context could change (and hopefully enrich) the experience of your artwork. 

6. A Drawing of the proposed project. Please include a sketch or rendering showing how the proposed work will look in the space (in either Gallery One or Gallery Two).

This aspect is obviously why I'm putting this drawing blog post up. It would therefore be useful to follow the links to earlier posts on drawing for site specific proposals. Two types of drawing are usually made, those that show the audience what they are going to get, usually perspectives or isometric projections, done either by hand or using computer drawing programs and drawings that highlight the relationship between the proposed work and its surroundings, in this case they ask for a map, see point 7. 

7. A Map of the space marking where your project would ideally be placed. (The gallery provides a link for this) 

Artists involved in exhibitions are responsible for the execution and installation of their own artwork. Artists should understand that they are responsible for delivering their work to the gallery, installing and de-installing their work. Smack Mellon does not have a full time staff of preparators. Smack Mellon staff can assist in installation of work requiring a bucket lift or special mounting, when arranged in advance. Our staff may also assist artists with installation of other complicated projects but will not be involved in helping the artist to build their work on site.

Specifics about the installation of artwork, the equipment and resources that Smack Mellon is able to provide will be discussed after the initial proposal has been reviewed and accepted as a proposal under consideration.

The issues surrounding amount of help and support are also vital. You need to find these things out before you put together your proposal. In this case because they do not offer support, you would need to reassure the gallery in the way you wrote the proposal that everything is actually 'doable'. 

Katayoun Pasban Dowlatshahi: Proposal for Bacup

It is important to remember that not all project proposals for public siting are realised. For instance, the artist Katayoun Pasban Dowlatshahi was commissioned to create a new, permanent artwork in collaboration with the local authority engineers for the culvert area of the River Irwell, Bacup in Lancashire. She proposed a design that brought the river back as a central focus to the town, unfortunately despite local and County support, and with additional funding from Arts Council England, this project did not materialise. However one of the other uses for site specific visualisations is to build up your cv, because each project attempted builds up skills in negotiation, problem solving and inventive realisation, all of which are embedded into the visualisations made, even though the project might itself not be realised. 

Nike Savvas: Proposal for the Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne 

Brook Andrew: Local Memory

The images for Brook Andrew's 'Local Memory' and Nike Savvas's 'Proposal for the Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne' like Dowlatshahi use computer software to visualise how their ideas will work. In Brook Andrew's case the visualisation shows how 18 portraits of people who have lived, worked and witnessed change in the brewery since it opened in 1909. will be illuminated with neon frames. Photoshopped images such as Brook Andrew's are probably the most common visualisation process, but if you compare the Photoshopped images with those drawn by Christo and Jeanne-Claude using conventional drawing materials, you can see why Christo and Jeanne-Claude were able to embed the drawing and visualisation process into the fund raising process. Their proposal drawings (they worked as a team, and although it was Christo that made the drawings, it was a deeply collaborative venture, some aspects of which he could do better and others she could handle because of her different skill set) are made to be exhibited in their own right and to be collectable. These drawings work as unique art objects that some people would pay a lot of money for. Most artist's proposal drawings go in a file and are never seen again after the project is realised. 

There is a new book out by TASCHEN that documents and details the history behind the posthumous installation of 'L’Arc de Triomphe, Wrapped' that gathers together photography and drawings made over many years and which in particular explains how Christo and Jeanne-Claude developed a process for major site specific projects that included visualisation drawings at its core. 

Christo and Jeanne-Claude: Drawings for both realised and unrealised projects

See also:

Drawing for site specific proposals: Part one

Drawing for site specific proposals: Part two

Drawing as exhibition proposals

A link to a more formal document that looks at how sites may be visualised. This is a document designed for planners to use, but it helps with the development of an understanding of how planners think and as an artist you will need to liaise with a variety of different thinkers, many of them will have been trained visually but to totally different ends. 

An artist's handbook for public art commissions A North Carolina Arts Council publication

Katayoun Dowlatshahi Photographer and public artist An artist's website that includes several examples of visualisations of proposals for public art pieces.