Hello,
I have this question for visual art parents; How do you handle age requirement for national juried shows? So many of them looks amazing but then asks for “minimum 18 years only.” Is there any work around for high school students?
You might want to submit this to the visual arts major forum http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/visual-arts-film-majors/
Ah Thanks!
Those sponsoring the show get to establish the rules. I’m sure they have a reason to exclude those younger than 18. Maybe because those artists can’t sign waivers, maybe they just don’t want children at the shows. Their show, their rules.
There were quite a few scholarships and internships my daughter couldn’t apply for as a college freshman because she was 17. Those were the rules. Most of them were through department of US government. 18 is the rule, she was just on the wrong side of the rule.
@twoinanddone, Mine would turn 18 in late November of freshmen year, would she have problems too? What were the internships?
They were mostly for science scholarships through the government, but she couldn’t apply in the spring of senior year or even the summer and fall of freshman year in college. There are some that are a scholarship with summer employment that start at the beginning of freshman year and she wasn’t 18 until 2 days after that first semester ended. I’m not saying she would have gotten them, but she couldn’t even apply. She’s an engineer, so a lot of the internships require her to be 18 to work for the government in a lab.
Not being 18 when starting college was more of an inconvenience than a problem. There were a lot of NCAA forms I had to sign while all her teammates could sign their own. I still had to sign for any medical care. I was (but actually still am) a co-signer on her bank account. In fact it worked to her advantage as the school wanted to move her from freshman housing to an upper division apartment, off campus and I said absolutely not are you going to move a 17 year old girl off campus in a building where the average age is probably 22 and is about 90% male. The housing director backed off immediately.
Glad it worked for better at least for that occasion. I will remember that exact line just in case the same happens to mine.
I guess I would ask why a national juried show. I have a musician and a dancer kid, and we avoided competitive situations as long as we could.
I was just looking at a wonderful directory of residencies and other programs for artists, dancers, musicians writers and film-makers. http://www.artistcommunities.org/ Most of them were for over 18 as well, but not all. I would try to find a directory of residencies, workshops or programs for your child, where individual work can be done in a supportive atmosphere surrounded by other creative people working on projects.
Here is an example: http://summer.putneyschool.org/ (note the sculpture workshop)
Alternatively, working with a teacher, taking class, and trying to get work shown. It is true that juries can provide great feedback, but I think there is a reason most are for over 18.
I think, in all arts, it is good to foster the idea of long term development. I have seen early wins in national competitions working against that, honestly. A lot of big deals in high school feel they have already made it. It is, in fact, a long long road to realize an individual artistic “voice”.
Disclaimer here is that I do not have a child in the visual arts 
There is the National Scholastic art competition that is open to middle school and up. I find the scoring a little different because it is based on pictures of the work.
Here in Texas, the big competition is V.A.S.E. for high school students. Over 20,000 pieces are entered and 150 get the top score. I don’t know if other states do something similar.
Thanks for the feedbacks! Daughter enjoyed art from childhood, and has some good achievement for her age, although it’s far from enough to give her early success as a child artist. She took art classes with high school students at young age, and after that took 9 community college art courses. She is taking her 10th now. She has been homeschooled, and applied to boarding high schools for this Fall because she wants to try other things in the world as well. She has reached to a level that she can continue her art more or less independently, with some guide from an art teacher.
Her first juried competition was for college students. Her ceramics professor recommended it, and her work was selected as an exhibiting finalist. She enjoyed the reception day experience. Later I came by a national juried show held in a local gallery, submitted her best work, and it was also exhibited, although neither of them got any award. She liked that reception too. It seemed submitting works to juried shows is a natural thing to do for visual artists. She was not really hoping to win a final reward and not competing in front of crowd like performing art, so not much pressure there. I sent her works to three more shows, and she exhibited one more time at a New York gallery, again no reward. This time I just shipped her work to save air ticket and time for travel.
Last night I found three more shows that some of her works meet criteria and don’t specify age requirement. It’s pretty easy to submit them, and the fee is reasonable ($20~40) for possibly being selected so she can put the exhibition on her resume. Unlike students events, those professional exhibits can stay on her resume forever.
I hadn’t submitted her work to K-12 competitions, because Scholastic and Young Art have age/grade limit. And competitions for younger age students just didn’t seem right for her. She submitted several of her art works to Scholastic this year for the first time. All got regional gold keys. But I am not expecting her to win any national medal yet. She can start submitting to Young Art in 2 years (or 3 years if she enter a school as an 8th grader instead this Fall) I will look for other events for high school students too, since she will become one soon.
Also, she went to Interlochen’s 3 weeks summer camp. She had great fun! But not much new skills in art, and didn’t have enough time to create anything substantial. She needs at least 30 hours for a good piece. This summer, she says she wants to stay at home, since she will be away to a boarding school in the Fall.
I just want to caution again that too much focus on competition and winning can have long term negative effects for an artist who is young. Granted, the resume can help with college admissions, but for younger teenagers, admission to college doesn’t have to be a focus either, at least not yet.
The other caution is that kids who soar like this precociously, sometimes have trouble adjusting once they are actually college-age. Attending college classes at her age means she is special, but once she is actually college age, she will be just another student, and at the bottom of the totem pole at that.
There is a danger of burnout too. Developing at her own pace with internal motivation rather than extrinsic, may help avoid that. Exhibitions and awards and competitions are fine as long as they aren’t motivating the artwork itself. Art is a life-long journey.
Depending on her age, consider handing over control to her as well, so that she chooses what to do with her art work and mails them herself, if that is what she wants to do.
It sounds good that she is going to a boarding school with varied offerings where she can try a number of things. Hope she has a wonderful summer at home and that you enjoy the precious months with her as well.
Thanks for the advise. She does have full control on classes she take and arts she make. Neither I nor my wife asked her to make something specific, or make anything at all, as long as we can remember.
I search for juried shows that meet artworks she already made on her own, and recommend her to submit to them. She isn’t interested in shows enough to do them all by herself though.
In our family we have pretty good idea about what 4 years colleges will be like. Art school will be way beyond the community college courses that she is taking now. My wife has a BFA degree. And we understand that precocity or even prodigious achievement doesn’t correlate with lifelong success. But I don’t worry and I don’t even care much. Seems like she isn’t even going to major arts. Instead she wants to keep art only as a hobby until she becomes much older after she has first experienced other things in the world.
I am a practical person. While she doesn’t strike me as a genius and I don’t have wild imagination on her career success as an artist, it seems clear to me that her visual arts is good enough to be the major EC in her college admission 4~5 years later. Collecting rewards with arts that she already made on her own seems like a no-brainer to me. Many shows require recent works, so her current pieces can’t be submitted later.
Your original question was how to get an exception to the 18 year old rule for shows. I thought she was 17 and just trying to get to the next level, but now it seems she’s only 13. There are some rules that just can’t be waived,whether your child is taking college courses as a 13 year old or not. No matter how good she drives, she can’t get a license. No matter how responsible she is, she can’t drink or make her own medical decisions. She’s a child. Even if she becomes emancipated, there are some things she’s just not going to be allowed to do.
Let her be in the local art shows that welcome children. Have her try out other art mediums. Or music. Or a sport. If she’s already taken 10 classes at the CC, she’s not going to have anything left to take when she’s in high school and it’s unlikely they will count those credits toward her high school degree (some states will only count math and languages before 9th grade)…
Does not seem like a no-brainer to me. I think you are overestimating how much colleges care about middle school. They want to hear about what students have done in high school. Middle school is ancient history by then and if she has to go back that far to find things to list, I’m not sure that makes a good impression.
She might make some good connections with like-minded kids if she participates in age-appropriate events.
@twoinanddone, There are shows that don’t specify age requirements and she has exhibited in three of them already. I don’t think submitting artworks to juried shows is comparable to driving. Even driving has exception like farm license. But let’s move on.
Daughter has received piano and guitar lessons. She tried voice too. She isn’t learning music now, but will try some again in high school. She is in a sports team that practices 4 hours per week.
She cares about life outside of art studio and that’s why she wants to go to a boarding school, instead of transferring to a local university with spatial art major. Recently she started taking general education courses at her community college, and is going to nearly complete transfer requirement to 4 years universities by end of this semester.
Before getting formal instructions, she tried out many art mediums on her own. Her search for right medium has been quite extensive until she found polymer clay and ceramics as her favorite. But she still doesn’t mind trying out other mediums occasionally. She has boxes of 1000+ art works in many mediums, both 2d and 3d. Homeschooling enabled her to invest more time on her passion. She has always spent 20~30 hours per week, sometimes more.
When her group drawing classes with high school students was ended, the best remaining option was college courses, which she was fortunately invited by a prof. She was already quite skilled then. Children’s art lessons were unbearably short for her. College art courses have been the favorite part of her life for 2.5 years, and none of us cares if they are going to be counted on her high school transcript.
Art is not like math or science. She can still take highschool level art courses while making more skilled pieces. Some art teachers where she applied appreciated her portfolio and offered independent study options too. It might or might not look good on her college application. But I always put her learning and enjoyment first, and worry about college applications later. The art awards and shows could help too.
I admit I’m an not a fan of kids taking college class at a very young age unless there is just no other options, such a calculous class. My opinion and my choice for my own kids, and I know not one everyone agrees with me. I also don’t think AP classes are ‘just like college.’ In college, teachers don’t take attendance and don’t check your binders to make sure you are doing the assigned work.
I thought my daughter was too young for college at 17 and I had a lot of protections in place for her, including a coach who was watching her. Why? Because I went to college at 17 and know the risks I took like walking around alone at night, drinking, and just basically acting like I owned the world. There is just such a difference in how D is at college at 19 than at 17. Younger than 17? No way.
@mathyone, Wouldn’t colleges care if the middle school achievements are significant and connected to high school years? If she lists 10 juried shows, would they check the date and correct it as 6 juried shows instead? What if, god forbid, she wins an award at one of them? My hope is that it will count since it would be professional level achievement. If not, at least the exhibits have been positive on her boarding high school applications. And exhibiting on future shows can count for her high school since she will soon become a high school student.
She has made good connections to like-minded kids she met at age-appropriate events. She regularly attends them. But she wants more of them and that’s why she applied to boarding schools for this Fall.
@twoinanddone, we all have different children and different choice. Calculus can be taken online. It’s harder with Ceramic Sculpture. She interviewed VP’s at two community colleges at age 10 with her portfolio for special registration. Both VPs encouraged her. She wanted to try. A professor wanted to take her. Safety was not an issue since we delivered her to and picked her up from her classroom. It’s not like she is living in a college dorm.
Well, that’s my opinion, sure, ask other parents how they handled it. My first kid had some state awards from middle school which tied in to hs activities and they didn’t seem worth mentioning. Also, the space is pretty limited.