Transcripts
1. Introduction: You want to get accepted
into your dream our school residency program or grant this videos for you. Hi. My name is Bret Park, and I'm a 22-year-old artist
based in Los Angeles. I graduate USC with a Double
Major in Communication Art. I attended an art residency at Yale Norfolk, summer of 2023, an art featured on the
cover of the LA Times and exhibited in New
York and Los Angeles. Now, among these small wins came hundreds of applications that I sent out and many rejections. And I'm trying to share
with all of you the tools, tips and tricks that I
picked up along the way, that will help you
avoid the mistakes I made and give you the
best shot at success. Together, we'll go
over everything from preparing your mindset
for application season, finding the right opportunities for you and applying to them. This class project, be
sure to submit a link to your finite portfolio so I can take a look at it and
get some feedback. If any of that sounded
interesting to you, keep watching this video.
2. Preparing Your Workspace & Mindset : Again by preparing both your
mindset and work space so you can go into your application with confidence and efficiency. When applying to
these opportunities, remember to lead with
confidence and passion. You always want to
put your best foot forward so you can help
the people reviewing your application know
that you're going to make the most out of the opportunity
that you're applying for. It's always best to believe
or at least pretend to believe that you are the best applicant for the opportunity. This mentality will
subconsciously help you advocate for you and your own R. Because Babes, this may sound harsh. But if you don't believe in your R and the people reviewing your application don't think that you believe in yourself, why would they believe in
you? Let's think about that. And if you ever get insecure
or position like myself, always remember that
you don't have to decide whether you're right
for the opportunity or not. Ultimately, it's not up to you. It's up to the jurors. So try not to deny yourself of something that may
be right for you. It's giving the quote you miss 100% of the shots
you don't take. And although I'm not
obsessed with sports, I definitely believe it
works for this scenario. Now that you have
the right mindset, it's time to set up
your work space. Assuming you have
documentation of all your artwork that
you plan on submitting, I would put everything into a consolidated folder
on your laptop with the file name of each work being the title of the piece
and the year was made. It's great because
for every portfolio, you can always just
reference that folder and then just drive
and drop Babes. Now, most applications require you to have some sort
of writing supplement. And instead of writing in the actual place where you're submitting the
actual application, I always copy and paste the questions into a
separate Google document. So if there's any
glitches in the system, I still have all
that work saved. Multiple times, I have submitted applications in Google forms, thinking, a glitch won't happen. Why would it happen to me?
It then does happen to me, and I lose everything. So to avoid that, just
put it in a Gool Doc, it's easier, and you can
control the font and the size. So you can have a
more enjoyable, familiar experience
writing everything out. Now, the most common platform
that our institutions have people submit work on
is called slide room, and they have software
that allows you to put in your work and save it. But if you're submitting
something like a PDF of all your work that
you have to create yourself, I'd highly recommend
using either Canva, Figma, or Google
slides to do this. These three platforms
allow you to export with different
file types, whether it's PNG, JPEG, or PDF. Many applications ask you
for different file types so as jurors on the other side can download it with whatever
software they have. And for more specific signing
tips on your portfolio, stay tuned for future lessons. The last thing I always do
for workspace setup is have a notion page or some kind
of Google Drive folder, where I can have
a running archive of everything I applied to. This is really helpful
because a lot of applications ask for
very similar things, whether it's an artist
statement, artist bio, resume, CV, written statements. So having the archive
allows you to easily find the relevant information
that you need to reduce and recycle. We love to work smarter
and not harder over here, especially when
you're applying to multiple things a
day, a week, a month. It just helps you
in the long run. And also, you can see your
progress looking back, and it's really fun
to see Oh, my God, that thing I wrote,
like two months ago was really kind of got awful. Really leveled up since then. Maybe you're into that. I know. Also note that all these
different websites and platforms will be linked
in the research section, so all can just refer that. Now that you have a
strong foundation to start applying to things. Next, we're going to talk about how to research the
relevant schools, grants, or residency programs
that are relevant to you.
3. Researching Opportunities: Researching what our
opportunity is right for you, whether it's a school,
residency, grant, or et cetera. Here's a question that
I'd like to consider to narrow down my list
of applications. How does my artistic practice fit in the context
of this space? For example, if you're
a figuredive painter, maybe applying to a
gallery that shows more ceramics isn't necessarily
the right space for you, even if they accept your work. While it's always
amazing to show your application everywhere
and see what comes back, you also want to
reduce the amount of effort that you have to
go through so you can spend more time on
the applications that are actually going to help
you build your career. Now, this doesn't mean
to be super picky. Still want to have a broad
scope because you never know what could come back to you or will help you in the future. Curating a list down
to things that will actually benefit you
is always helpful. Another friendly tip, please do not get intimidated
when you are applying to things
about the prestige of the gallery institution. You never, ever, ever know
what could come back to you. So again, let them
be the deciders, if you're right for
the opportunity. Don't think that
these spaces are imrely going to shut you out
because of your background. For actually finding
these opportunities, here are some websites
that I like to browse, and these will be linked
in the resource section. Some of these have a
paywall, some of them don't. Ortenda DN, the Pilot art list, which is an e mail subscription. US News and World
Report for schools and colleges to see where they
rank if you are in the US. Art connect.com has a
great art Open call list, as well as MMA, which
is a great platform. Here's an example
of how I would scan these different lists to
see what's relevant for me. So for the pilot art lists, I would scroll down to the new List call section in the United States and look for something that kind
of piques my interest. The first thing that came up was this 2025 Miami University
Young painters competition. I am a painter in the US, so this is perfect for me. There's a $10,000
award. Love that. And the theme is representational
Realism painting. Have some of that. So I clicked on the
actual website to see more specifics about the
opportunity and Babs. Come to find out it's only for ages 25 to 35 that are
invited to participate. So because I'm 22, I can't even do that. So
it's time to move on. And so I went back to the list, found another opportunity called the Late Lightning
Fund Artist grant. This is for LA County
residents, me, who are at least
18 years of age, and not currently enrolled
in a college program. Perfect. I fit that description. I can get some money out of it, my coin, and I have enough
time to apply for it. So this seems like a good fit. So I'd put this in a list, whether it's on a
Google Doc Notes app, et cetera, to know what I
should apply to that month. Extremely underrated but very, very fruitful platform for
finding opportunities. It also Instagram
stories randomly. If you follow curators, galleries or collectors on Instagram in your regional area, they usually have random
Instagram story posts with open calls just everywhere, flying out the window. Okay? I will just t through
people's Instagram stories to see if someone re
posted an open call. And I found so many
applications and jobs that way. So random. It's almost like
being in college again and trying to
just click rough your friend's Instagram stories to see if someone's throwing a party because you kind of can't keep track
of everything. There's a bit of luck to see if you just happened
to find some of Instagram story of
something you could go to or attend party or open call. And you can make a little
fun game out of it. Where's Waldo, but where
is the opportunity? Next, I'm going to
show you how to adapt your portfolio for each
opportunity that you find.
4. Adapting Your Portfolio: Applying to different
opportunities, it's important to
curate a portfolio that fits opportunity the best. As a multi disciplinary artist, I would not submit a painting to an opportunity that's focused on experimental performance. Conversely, if I see that an open call is
prioritizing painting, I wouldn't submit my video
performances to there. For example, a gallery called Tiger Strike Asteroid in LA had an open call for an
exhibition proposal. I was looking at the
previous artists that they had and what kind
of art they showed. And it was a lot of
different installation, experimental painting
and sculpture works. So I knew that even
though I was able to submit any medium I wanted
for the opportunity, I was going to put my
photography sculptures and performances inside
because that exhibition just makes sense for
that space rather than a figurative painting
exhibition because they haven't had one of
those in the past year. For example, this way I submitted to Tiger
strike Asteroid. You can see it's a
lot more conceptual. I lead with two performances,
ess ancefs, something. Y'all can read it yourselves. It's more conceptual, sculptural works with oil paint
between cellophane, talking about the
plasticity of gender, and I write this all in the
descriptions of each work. Compare this to my
painting portfolio, and it consists of Well,
yes, paintings, Babe. And even though I
really like these paintings and enjoy them, it just didn't work
for the portfolio. Now, let me tell you
something a little secret. I ended up knocking this
open call, but that's okay. One person got out
of 400 people, and I think I put my best foot forward with this
conceptual work. I'm sure if I submitted
the paintings, I would have been way lower in the ranking than the
portfolio I did submit. Comparing that opportunity
to a magazine open call, where you have to submit
two D images of your work. People aren't going
to be able to view a sculpture that
well in a magazine. So a lot of times
they prioritize these paintings or photographs. And that's exactly
what I submitted to those publications. A great way to see what
may or may not work for each opportunity is looking
at the previous winners. Websites usually post installation photos of
previous exhibitions. Or artists that they selected. And if you see a through line, either in medium, theme or educational background
of each artist. You can see how to bend either
your writing descriptions, portfolio itself to fit
what they're looking for. And adapting your
portfolio is not just with the actual works
that you're submitting, but also how you
write about them. So for something more
commercial like that magazine, I would write about my work
in a way that's very fluffy, poetic language that
is not as academically rigorous as something like the Tire strike
asteroid exhibition, which would probably
have me reference a bunch of theorists and artists to back up the experimentation that
I'm doing in my work. Something more commercial
like a publication. It's for the average
broader consumer that is necessarily interested in that academic language
or vernacular. An example of me
using our English vernacular to write about
a piece would be this, referencing still images from a performance piece titled from the top to the
bottom and back again, I Frankenstein
together a body in three panels alluding
to a comic strip. Pab Preciado in the counter
sexual manifesto outlines the fantasmic
ghostly qualities of Apalas being that
it is not real, but its presence can be feel. I embrace such
ghostly qualities and extend the fantasmic
to my cartoon double. Bound by the panel borders framing my
representational body. My cartoon double is
empowered to supersede such restraint to consume felt energy that
subsumes my being. In contrast, if I wrote about
this piece for publication, I would just talk about
like the seductive nature of the colors and not use any, like, fancy Shmanhi language that cites a bunch of theorists. So, again, babes,
the archive that we built previously will
help out here to see, h, is opportunity
more commercial? Let me just cup and paste my commercial description
of this work. Oh, it's more academic
and institutional. Let me just copy and paste the citations that I
have in my archive. Next, we're going to
learn how to order your pieces and position
them in your portfolio.
5. Positioning Your Pieces: Showing your work,
it can be really difficult to decide
what comes first, second, third, fourth and fifth. Everyone has a different
way of doing it. And here are a few
that I've seen have worked for my
friends and myself. First way is to frontload
all of your good stuff. If jurors are only spending
5 minutes per application, and the first thing you see
is one of your weaker pieces, it could set a poorer tone in their mind that the rest
of the portfolio follows. But if you start super strong, it could immediately cast
their attention and have them pay more thought to the works
that are coming afterwards. If everything in
the first half of your portfolio is
super super strong, and the later half
isn't as great. It might make them question their first thought
and their gut feeling. And you may not want that. So this method is mainly used by people who
think all their work is pretty consistently strong with just a couple that are
really, really great. The next way is to start your strongest and end
with your strongest. This makes it so that people are really interested and engaged, but then they can kind
of float off a bit, and then the last thing they see is really amazing, so they know you have potential
going forward. Now, if all your pieces have a pretty similar strength to it, and you don't think one is
more amazing than the other. I would just focus on a flow. Do the colors of the portfolio
flow into one another? If you have color and
black and white pieces, it may not be great to
alternate because visually, it's such like a jump
for these people reviewing your portfolio that they may get turned off by it. But if it's all black and white, and then it's really
transitions into color, you have a nice flow
for them to kind of be eased into the transition of
your work and your practice. And if you think none
of these methods work, then just do what resonates with you based on
your gut feeling, because usually that gut feeling is correct. Now, if you're a multimedia artist, last
interdisciplinary artist, I personally group
everything together, so I have paintings,
performances, and sculptures together. And the order within
each discipline is also determined by the
strength of the piece. So for my strongest painting, I'll put it towards the front, write a whole description about the series of paintings
that I made entirely, and then just don't write as much for the ones
that follow it. For example, I say, for
this purple painting, while I play with
the binaries of flat versus inflated or fleshy, I employ pictorial and
material contradictions within my paintings to
break up such dichotomies. I go more into the piece
in breaking down some of the iconography that I
include in the painting. So they have a language to go off of when they view
each one after that. And I don't need to
be redundant and re explain the iconography in each painting because
then people will get like annoyed and then tune
off. So there isn't any new to add to the conversation, I just will not write a really
long description for it. So something can
be a really great and fantastic idea or concept, but if you say it ten times, it loses some of its
weight, you know? Another quick tip for writing
the descriptions is to avoid only putting
personal anecdotes and personal stories into it. While it's great to know
the artist's experience and how it informs the work. It's even better to attach
that personal experience to a broader theme that can be felt by an audience
outside of yourself. For example, if I made
this ceramic tiger piece, and talk about only how I like tigers and why I think
tigers are cool and fun. It might not be as strong
as thinking about, Oh, what does a
tiger mean for me? Culturally, I just
grew up with a lot of different tiger
iconography coming from a Korean background, and a touching that
personal experience with that cultural experience and placing that into
the Western context. So I'm slowly branching
out for myself to broader systems of power
that could affect everyone. So there's a broader appeal. In the next lesson,
we're going to talk about avoiding cliches.
6. Avoiding Clichés: Cliches is very important. So you have a portfolio
that is fresh, standout, and sticks in the
mind of the jurors and people reviewing
your application. So maybe consider avoiding
the following tropes. One, celebrity portraits.
We've all seen them. It kind of only demonstrates your ability to realistically
render someone. I feel like you all know
exactly what I'm talking about, but just in case here
just a little quick Google search of some
of these tropes. Lots and lots of
celebrity portraits. And just scrolling through
the Google image search, you can see how jurors
could get overwhelmed, over stimulated by the
same or similar image. Also, side note,
why did everyone in like 2012 draw Morgan Freeman? Question of the
day. Two huge eyes with pythma color pencils
that are realistic. We've all seen it. This also includes the lime
lips. Yes, ma'am. For those who somehow forgot, these are the lime lips
that are absolutely iconic. So much so my friend last year, literally made an
entire exhibition dedicated to lime lips and
the commodification of them. They watched so
many submissions, and literally went viral
on Twitter multiple times. So I think jurors are
through with seeing them. Any kind of, like, animal you see really often in pop culture, like a butterfly for symbolizing freedom, expression,
or transformation. Sideno, I am a bit more
forgiving for this stroke because a lot of people
have different connections with nature spiritually, and I do definitely
think that you should include it if
that is personal to you. I'm just talking about, like
the psychedelic butterflies. The ones that rendered
with watercolor super bright and colorful that
we've kind of seen before. If you are trying
to include them, maybe just have a little twist. Another one is like a
really strong emotion, like a screaming phase. A lot of people have
seen that before. We get it. It's like ans. It's kind of fun, but maybe
you want to say something a bit more than just expressing
that singular emotion. While some of these
look really intense and emotional and
amazing on its own, I feel like when you are
inundated as a juror with all of these different
high intensity emotions, it could all begin to look flat, and it's harder to stand out if you do have
something so simple, just a screaming phase. Some common tropes that do work potentially
for a portfolio. I would recommend high
school to apply for college, ourselves portraits of any
kind because it is inherently unique to you when
you put yourself into the picture plane
or the painting. Anything mixed media is always great because
your version of experimentation will probably be different from another person's. Another tip is to
not be pressured to submit anything you don't like
simply because you heard, it's good to include
in a portfolio. This is quite specific, but a little story time. When I was applying to isd
as a senior in high school, I was told that they love
figure drawings, okay? It was the hype. They want
to see your technique. And I didn't have
any. So literally two nights before submitting, I made these god
awful figure drawings that I ended up
putting my portfolio. And as you can see,
very embarrassingly, they did not look good. The proportions were so bad. The line weight was not amazing, but it ended up
submitting it anyways because that's what I
thought you had to do. And it ended up bringing down the entire level
of my portfolio. Now, since then, I hope you
all see the improvement, but if I were to go
back, I would just have not included them at
all in the first place. And even if you do do any of the tropes I said
weren't amazing, if you attach a great concept to it and have a great written
description about it, then, by all means, go for it. Okay. Next we to learn how
to design your portfolio.
7. Designing Your Portfolio: Every application is different, and you might not have to
design your own portfolio if you're using platforms like slide room to submit your work. However, having a clean
PDF of your portfolio to send to different grant
opportunities, curators, galleries, et cetera is
always great to have in your back pocket for
when you need to introduce yourself and send
it to someone real quick. For this lesson,
I'm going to use my own portfolio as an example, using the lessons, tips
and tricks I learned from my school and
industry professionals. For the opportunities I
usually gravitate towards. It's very institutional,
heavy, very academic, which means they
don't love seeing your personality shine through in the actual designing
of the slide show. So all can get an idea
of what I'm saying. I'm just going to
going to Canada and search through these
different presentation modes. You can see that none of
these actually work for an art portfolio because
there's just too much going on. If I had this unsubmitted to a gallery or residency or grant, I don't think they would
take me as seriously. And, of course, there's a lot of biases and critiques
we can have of that, but it's just how
it is, I suppose. Can be good sometimes
to have a nice peekaboo of creativity that makes
your portfolio stand out. But hopefully, the work
will just speak for itself, and you don't have to add these extra additions that could potentially be distracting
even detract from your work. Mine is a very brutalist
stripped down design. It is a white background. The typeface is very clean. It's industry standard. It's large in the
places it needs to be is very, very readable. The opposite of
this would to have white text on a
yellow background or any sort of typeface or font that is difficult
to read and understand. This is very straight at the
point. It is what it is. Here's my work. Here's
a bit about myself, and that's it. You're done. For the title page,
I always start with my name and contact
information slash were to find me like my website. Then I go into my
artist statement, what the work's
gonna be about, a quick biography of myself,
and then the work. I personally don't love borders around my
paintings because I'm trying to make
the image as big as possible on the slide and
take up the most space. But borders are okay. However, the main
thing to know is that my text is not distracting
from the image. If I were to shift this text
to the center and bold it, this in terms of
like a hierarchy of design almost equates
the text with the image. When that should
not be the case. The image is always, always, always going to take precedent over the title,
medium, et cetera. Things to consider is if you
want to have your portfolio go slide by slide in a vertical
manner or a horizontal. And I just personal preference, like the horizontal
ones better because you start with your information and your artist statement slash bio, and those always fill up a page better horizontal
than vertical. But you pick what works
best for yourself. For fun. Here's my entire art
portfolio for those curious, and I'm gonna play a little
music in the background, so those goes a bit
quicker for ya. D D Peter Peter The next thing we're
going to go over in the last lesson is
actually reviewing your entire portfolio
to make sure everything is nice and
perfect for submission.
8. Reviewing Submission Requirements : Reviewing your submission,
it's always important to read the fine print to see if you're following
directions properly, or else you may be disqualified
from the opportunity, no matter how good your work is. Here are some things
to watch out for. One, the number of pieces
that you have to include, the number of characters or words allowed for each
written response, the file size, the file type, the duration of the videos, if you have time based work, and the file name of each
work you're submitting. And each opportunity, even if they're on a common platform, like slide room, have very
different requirements. For example, For this residency, it says, please provide up to ten media samples
of your recent work. Recommended that
your works have been completed in the
past five years. Image size should be no
longer than 5 megabytes each. JPEGs and PDFs are preferred. So I don't want to submit P&G, should probably go
with the two listed. Each time based work
sample should be up to 5 minutes in
length or less. So that's the cap
per time based work. Linked media must
be set to public. No private media
will be able to be linked even with passport
in the description field. Do not include multiple pages in PDFs as one media sample. Multiple images in a single
media sample are not recommended and can be difficult
for panelists to review. So even if it's only
recommended and not required, if you don't follow these rules, babes, like, they
might get annoyed. Girlies might get
annoyed and just emotionally not connect
with your work as much. So I would just stick to
this with the T. Now, look how different
this next one is. You must attach a
minimum of five up to a maximum of 15 images for your application
to be considered. Please upload your files
in the sequence you would like them to be viewed with the five strongest images first. So here they're actually
telling you how to order the pieces because
they're going to look at the five images first and decide if they want to keep
looking at your portfolio. Do not include any personal identifying
information in your file name, slide slash videos or
work descriptions, including your name slash title Exhibition slash title venues, Awards and nomination,
affiliate organizations, links to YouTube VMo
or other websites. If any of your work samples include any of the
information listed above, your application will not be eligible for fellowship
consideration. It says that if your work samples include
this information, you will not be considered
for the fellowship, but you will be still considered for the actual
opportunity itself. So it gets so nit picky
and confusing Babe, like Just making
sure and reviewing that all your stuff is set up
correctly is so important. You don't want a
submission error to be the difference of you getting
an opportunity and not. It's literally tooth and
comb when there are hundreds of people applying for
just one or two spots. So making sure everything is pristine will already
put you above the people who aren't
double checking and immediately knocked
the competition ab. And once you have everything double checked and ready to go, I will just take a deep breath, triple check and then
submit your application. Know that after
you submitted it, you did everything you possibly could to give yourself
the best chance, give yourself a pat
on the back, and keep going on the
next application.
9. Final Thoughts: Concludes our class on how to craft a successful
art portfolio. Congratulations to everyone
who made it to the end. We did this together.
You and me, Babes. Y'all learned so much
researching opportunities, cliches to avoid high
designed portfolio, double check things, et cetera. And I hope all are very proud of yourselves, 'cause
I'm proud of you. Now, if you want me to
review your class project, which is the
portfolios that you're submitting to different
opportunities, definitely submit it to the
class project gallery below. With all that being
said, thank you all so much again for
putting in the work, and I hope you'll have a great
rest here day. Good bye.
Brett Park, Based in Los Angeles
