For 10 years, Jo Moncrief has fine-tuned her artwork to impress juries for Richardson’s semi-annual Cottonwood Art Festival.
Moncrief is one of only 19 artists living in the greater Dallas-Fort Worth area to make the cut in last weekend’s 240-booth festival, which Moncrief believes is the most prestigious in the area.
“My husband was like, ‘Do you know, one day you may not get juried in?’ and I’m like, ‘I know,’” Moncrief said, laughing.
“But it’s a fact of life when you do juried shows: It’s all up to the jurors,” she said. “And so it’s a fiercely competitive world.”
Most of the artists selected for the festival are from out of state, and no preferential treatment is given to local artists in the selection process, said Serri Ayers, festival director.
“This is for the community,” Ayers said. “It’s the best art in the country that I’m trying to bring to Richardson. By not selecting every local artist or [saying] it’s only for local artists, it’s the quality that I’m trying to bring in for the community.”
This means those local artists who are selected are being recognized for their outstanding work, Ayers said.
The jury narrows down the field from about 1,500 applicants around the country. They evaluate high-resolution images of various submissions from each artist, judging for consistency of style and authenticity, among other factors.
“[The selection process] is extremely well run,” said Far North Dallas resident Betty Robbins, who lives a short drive down the road from Cottonwood Park, the site of the festival. “Part of it is keeping out people who do reproductions and photocopies — things that they call original art, which it isn’t.”
The level of detail with which artists’ work is evaluated makes getting into Cottonwood a satisfying accomplishment, Moncrief said.
“Digitally, the jurors have to be able to pull up the artwork and see even your brush strokes,” Moncrief said.
And although she has earned a booth in nearly every show since her first time in the spring of 2004, she said she knows what it’s like to not be selected.
“Actually, I think it made me just decide I had to look at myself hard and say, ‘OK, [does] every one of my images flow?’” Moncrief said. “It’s a tough world —the art world of heavily juried shows, which Cottonwood is.”
In more than a decade as an artist for the festival, Robbins has earned booths consistently for her primitive style of paintings, as well as her detailed visual portrayals of people’s life stories.
But the first few times Robbins tried to get in, she didn’t make the cut, she said. When she finally broke through, she described the feeling in one word: “scary.”
“I don’t think anybody gets in the first few times they try there,” she said.
But the festival itself has influenced her work too, she said — especially the diverse group of musical acts that have performed through the years. Robbins said the idea for her series of jazz paintings had its origin at previous festivals.
“It pushed me in new directions,” Robbins said. “I probably never would have done those jazz paintings ... if it hadn’t been for Cottonwood.”
The weather was clear and sunny Saturday and Sunday as visitors weaved between the hundreds of art booths lining Cottonwood Park. Robbins, whose tent was set up close to the riverfront, showcased her work to groups of admirers and potential buyers.
The environment is great for people-watching, she said.
“You see the weirdest [dog] breeds and you see things you don’t ever see anywhere else,” Robbins said. “There’s one guy that comes with a parrot. I saw somebody that carries a rabbit around like a baby. You never know what you’re going to see there.”
Even before she first made the cut, Robbins had attended Cottonwood regularly during the three decades she’s lived in Far North Dallas.
Moncrief, too, attended regularly and used the artwork on display as a measuring stick for her own work.
“I wanted to see how to bring my work up to the quality to get into this show,” Moncrief said. “It was very difficult … to get into the show. It’s inspiring to me, even as a [selected] artist, to walk through there and see the quality of the work.
“I always am amazed by [the] creativity.”
Richardson/Lake Highlands/Far North Dallas editor Daniel Houston can be reached at 214-977-8024.
