Welcome to the Preslar Art Initiative’s 2020 season and Spring Exhibit: Metamorphosis!

Update: Deadline extended by 3 weeks. The exhibit opens on June 6.

It is April already and as I have promised last autumn when I announced the hiatus through March 30, 2020, I am writing this to announce the opening of the 2020 season of the Preslar Art Initiative.

Needless to say, life happens and things often do not work out as planned. I was writing a completely different version of this announcement about four weeks ago and now I have to redo the whole thing.

But I also tend to value reason over emotionalism and also tend to see the positives in everything.

During this time of so-called social distancing measures, many of us are adjusting into a new routine and new rhythms of life. Streets and cities are eerily quiet and vacant. Many activities we used to take for granted have ceased.

This time, however, calls us to be more creative and to see the world in a new, different way.

In a sense, we are in a kind of collective metamorphosis. We’re in a chrysalis awaiting to emerge and fly into the sky.

The question is: How will we act today so that when we emerge from this, we will be stronger and greater? What can we do today to prepare for the next stage in history? This may also be a time to look inwards and reflect. Not everything has to be active, busy, crowded, and loud.

On this note, I am announcing Preslar Art Initiative’s spring call for art!

This will be a virtual exhibit with a global audience — that’s going to be our biggest art show ever! We are now a gallery (and more!) without walls and borders! And what better way to celebrate the grand re-opening of PAI with this virtual exhibit?

Call for art

Theme: Metamorphosis

Deadline: Thursday, May 14, 2020, 11:59 p.m. Pacific Daylight Time (that’s same time zone as Vancouver and San Francisco).

Who can enter: Anyone from anywhere in the world (except for Cuba, Iran, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, and Syria).

Medium: Any that can be rendered and displayed digitally in a standard Web browser environment (must be mobile-friendly). It can be photographs (JPEG, WebP), photographs of 2D artwork, photographs of 3D artwork, vector drawings (SVG), raster images (JPEG, GIF, PNG, WebP), or even audio and videos and films (videos should be hosted on YouTube, Vimeo, Bitchute, DTube, etc. and should be embeddable on Web pages; audio should be hosted on Soundcloud or similar services).

Selection of artwork: This will be an open-call, non-juried exhibit. However, the curator reserves all rights to reject any artwork deemed obscene, inappropriate, or of low quality. The curator’s decision is final on this matter. This exhibit will be viewable by people around the world and by people from many different cultural norms, and should be also considered all-ages and family-friendly. In other words, no violence, no pornography, and no hate speech, among others. While we hope to include as many artworks as practically possible, if we receive too many entries we may need to be selective and may further limit the number of artwork exhibited per artist, and/or reject some artwork.

How to submit: Send an email to preslarart at protonmail dot com, with the following:

• Your contact information: name, pronoun(s), email address
• A brief artist’s statement (up to 750 words)
• Up to 10 pieces of art you wish to exhibit. Important: Do not attach images or videos to email. Instead, upload to Imgur (or similar image-sharing sites) and provide URLs to your artwork. If you are submitting audio or video, upload to sites such as Soundcloud and YouTube and provide direct URLs in the email.

Entry fee: Taking into account that many people are currently unemployed, the entry fee is “name your entry fee” or “pay what you can.” Suggested $5-$25 USD per artist. PayPal, money order (from the U.S. only — sorry, no personal or business checks), and cryptocurrency (BTC, LTC, ETH, BCH, DOGE and XLM only) are accepted.

How your art will be exhibited: We will be creating a special virtual exhibit site, as well as a printable (PDF) zine. The latter will only contain visual works, although we will print QR codes to your audio and video URLs. Considering the time it takes to put these together, we anticipate to open this exhibit on Saturday, June 6.

Copyright stuff: By entering this exhibit, all artists expressly agree to grant a perpetual, non-transferable, non-exclusive, and non-assignable license to Preslar Art Initiatives to reproduce and publish their work. Artists retain all other rights.

Other stuff: Artists are welcome to, at their options, include their contact informations to be published along their artwork for the sale of original pieces and/or availability of commissioned work. We do not take any additional fees or commissions in exchange for advertising, and we are not responsible for any transactions artists may have with the members of the audience arising from this exhibit.

Questions? Email Willow at preslarart dot protonmail dot com.