As you may
already know the Wisconsin Plein Air Painters Association in response to the
upcoming Umbrella Group meeting issued a survey to determine the consensus of
our group on various subjects...sure to come up...at the convention! As I am unable to attend this meeting myself
(as founder of WIPAPA) we have a representative going to this meeting. I did
not feel comfortable sending them without finding out how our people felt so we
decided to do a survey. As we (a group of us) developed the survey two things
became clear: 1. It was an opportunity to ask a wide variety of questions and
2...the questions would apply to most of the artists in the world of Plein Air.
We therefore decided to make it available to all so as to get the broadest
sample.
As the starting
point of the survey was the conversation begun in the original article written
by Eric Rhoads (The Courage to Make Waves…Oct. Nov. 2012) concerning standards
for plein air events and how to apply them.
I alerted Mr. Rhoads to the survey.
In his response he took issue with the statement “creation of a
sanctioning body to rate Plein Air events” and assured me in no uncertain terms
that was NOT his intent but rather suggested guidelines! ”This line creates a
survey bias and does not represent our intent and I think it does a disservice
to the survey result and sends the wrong message about our intent.” He said. At
this time I have no reason to doubt him. For this I apologize. It was not our
intent to misrepresent you!
It is only fair
to state that creating this survey became a bit contentious. Questions were
changed, added, deleted. Wording was squabbled over. Intent was questioned and
feelings bled. In the end we were divided about even releasing it. Consensus is not easy to
come by among artists. In the end I decided to push forward in hopes of gaining
more understanding from all who took the survey.
In hindsight, it
is easy to see we could have created a better survey. For instance it is clear
that invitational events have differing goals and standards than open events.
Given more time we could have asked a set of questions for each eventuality and
perhaps had clearer responses.
One continually
amazing thing to me…when asked what made a successful event …”camaraderie with
fellow artists” received the highest number of votes just ahead of sales! This
to me shows the very soul of my fellow artists…oh they are a goodly bunch!!
Results can be
found here:
