Guffaws & Applause

As a follow-up to a recent posting about the process of selecting representative work for an application to join the National Cartoonist Society, here's the rejection letter. Not that in the grand scheme of things do these things actually matter, which is the same as what I say to students who get their work rejected for the annual student art exhibition in our department gallery. Or any show anywhere for that matter: it's a healthy recognition that while sometimes it can hurt, the reality is that it has little to no bearing on your overall success as an artist. Note that it's the same with getting work accepted into a show - hooray, but don't get carried away: at some point you will deal with someone's bias and ignorance, which also works both ways, as anyone who's ever participated in a critique with the informed (one hopes) opinions of others can tell. Anyways, it's a humbling reminder that being a big fish in an even bigger pond - a sea really - is always gonna be comparatively insignificant to the folks with followers up there in the millions. After over a few deacdes in this market I reckon I "only" get 10-20k pairs of eyeballs a week peeking at my panels between platforms (on-line + print), not to mention the mountains of merch that's moved over the years. Since there are no clear guidelines, it's anyone's guess as to what degree this criteria weighs in on the scale of acceptance, but it's a safe assumption syndication is the threshold.

One metric I've mentioned many a time before is how for so long the cartoons actually paid the rent. That's something to be really proud of, as the gig economy gets really old for dancing bear circus acts. Now, mind you, as the Significant Otter often points out, there are actually a lot of other bills as well. Nevertheless, as the guidelines stipulate, “NCS membership is open to all creative professionals who earn a substantial part of their income working in the fields of cartooning, illustration, animation and graphic storytelling. We are an organization of esteemed peers and we welcome new members!” Again, reading between the lines, the non-syndicated probably need not apply, and presumably the role of education in the comics arts is not taken seriously as well. Kudos are in order though for their membership committee makeup, it's now far deeper than their historical roster of legacy winners - there's hope it'll eventually evolve along with the limping industry.

Accolades from the art department saved the day: As fortune had it, shortly thereafter, I was caught by surprise at the outpouring of promotional postings the UAF College of Liberal Arts + UAF Fine Arts did in ramping up publicity for the final First Friday - actually the entire month of the show - at Ursa back in January (see posts here & here). Always grateful for their recognition + support of peers that are near!

PS: Also as a side-note to that same recent posting wherein I also humblebragged about cracking a million unique visits to Ink & Snow, I neglected to look at the tiny little ticker way down at the bottom of the right-hand menu - seems my suspicion about most of the traffic (three quarters?) being bots and/or solipsistic navel-gazing was probably true, although I can't remember exactly what the statistical data points are for tracking with this program from when I originally set the blog up back in 2009. Well anyways, I'm still hear, and so are you too - thanks as always.