Miniature show coming up



The 11^th Annual National Miniature Exhibition is coming up fast. Submission dates for local artist is October 14-16, 2011. The show itself will run for the month of November into the first 2 weeks of December 2011 at The Renaissance Art Gallery in Huntington, WV. This show is an open entry show, open to all adult artists 18 and up. Works shipped to The Renaissance Art Gallery should be postmarked by October 12, 2011, to insure they arrive on time.

Traditional forms

Miniatures are the original portable art. While any work at 1/6th scale is technically a miniature, The Renaissance Art Gallery show, like most miniature shows does place size restrictions on entered work. This is the challenge. But it is also the tradition. While royalty and great nobles could commission huge paintings, real people created work in scale with their lives.

The first miniatures were often done on the backs of playing cards, easily hand held! And don’t forget small portraits in lockets! Jewelry is a natural outlet for those working in miniature.

Miniatures at sea

Miniature art is portable art. People from all walks of life have practiced it for centuries. Sailors at sea would fill long hours with scrimshaw carvings of available materials, often the teeth and ivory of marine mammals like whale teeth and walrus tusks. Woodsman in Appalachia simply used the natural material around them to whittle both practical items and small fun figurines.

Size matters

For miniature competition, size does matters. All shows have their own restrictions, but The Renaissance Art Gallery has adopted the same standards used in the major American miniature associations of 25 sq inches, or 5x5, but any configuration that gives you up to 25 sq inches is accepted. Last year we had one artist who works on 1 inch x 8 inch pieces. This is the maximum size, but not the required size. The most traditional size is still the size of a playing card, 2 1/2 inches by 3 1/2 inches (or the size of a baseball card) We have had much smaller pieces and enjoy them! Don’t forget that miniatures can also be sculpture! Three-dimensional pieces cannot exceed 8 inches in any one direction. Again, any art format is welcome, ceramics, stone, pottery or metal.

National show



The Renaissance Art Gallery’s Annual Miniature exhibition is a nationally recognized art show. This is why we strictly enforce the size requirements. It is also why photography and other mechanically reduced formats are not acceptable in this show. Our show draws the best from across our nation, and for many of us this is the only opportunity we will have of entering a national art competition. And it is fun.



There is still time



Now is the time to create wonderful small works of perfection and time to enter the 11th Annual National Miniature Exhibition. If you have never tried to work in miniature, now is the time! Help is available at The Renaissance Art Gallery on Wednesdays. Studio hours are from 12:00 until 7:00 pm. Artists are available to answer your questions and to help you work small!



The Renaissance Art Gallery

900 8th Street, Suite #20

Huntington, WV 25701



Gallery (304) 525-3235

Appointments: (304) 453-3187

gallerywv@yahoo.com

www.orgsites.com/wv/renaissance



http://twitter.com/wvgallery

http://renaissancegalleryart.blogspot.com/



Gallery hours are:

Friday & Saturday 12-4 pm, Sunday 1-4 pm

Studio hours Monday 10-Noon, Wednesday 1:00-7:30 pm and Saturday 10-Noon

Working Up the 10th Annual National Miniature Exhibition



3 Onions,
Esther Marie Versch

 Now that the show is hung, you would think things would settle down, but that is just the tip of the iceberg for a show like this. Wednesday October 27, Director Fern Christian and Susan Tschantz worked at tagging the artwork by entry number, making sure the entry number matched the artist’s entry information.

Thursday gallery artist Gary Taylor was on hand to welcome and assist our juror, Marshall University professor Don Van Horn, Dean of the Fine Arts College.

Gary also did a bit of proofreading, Susan Tschantz can do many things, but spell is not one of them. And we are all grateful for Gary’s keen eyes!

Saturday, both before and after our figure drawing class (which went great) we started putting up the identification tags. Since the judging was all over except for the shouting, we can now mark whose is who’s with the miniatures.

Year of the Small, Really Small!

3 Small Pieces

This year that presents a special problem. This seems to be the year of the small, really small! Our miniature exhibition has always been restricted more on size than content, but this year we relaxed the limits slightly to reflect the National Society of Miniaturist and the world Federation of Miniature Artists, so really expected a few larger (for miniatures) works. The opposite seems to have happened. While one of our soapstone sculptures comes in right at eight inches, another is the smallest we have ever gotten, at half an inch by 2 inches. We did get a mixed media painting at less than an inch.

So while we have more pieces and more artist than last year, they actually take up less room! We have 3 tiny works of art on a small shelf.

This year we also have more three-dimensional pieces than last year. Some really interesting sculptures and several pots and stoneware pieces have been entered.