Preparing your exhibit at RRUUC
If your art work is accepted for an exhibit at RRUUC, a month will then be scheduled for your exhibit and a curator from the Fine Arts Committee will be assigned to help you with your exhibit.
You would then need to contact the RRUUC office (301-229-0400) to reserve the Fellowship Hall for dates and times during your assigned month when you will hang your work and when you will take it down. Coordinate these date with your curator. In addition, we recommend that you schedule time for an opening reception, for the first or second weekend that the exhibit is up.
The agreement
You will fill out an agreement form with the dates for the hanging, opening, and taking down of the exhibit. Sign and return the agreement to the Fine Arts Committee co-chair. The Fine Arts Committee co-chair will send you the form (PDF), or you may download it here.
The agreement also lays out the responsibilities of the artist and of RRUUC. The agreement also will be signed by a Fine Arts Committee co-chair and a copy of the agreement will be provided to you.
Fees
RRUUC does not charge a fee for exhibiting your art. RRUUC receives 20% of the sales total. (Most galleries now take 40-50% of sales.)
Subject matter and presentation
Although the subject matter of the work is completely up to you, artists should remember that this is a religious institution and works should be appropriate for a wide range of ages and audiences, including young children and people of various religions.
Works of art should be attractively matted and/or framed, as appropriate to the medium, and must use wire for hanging. RRUUC supplies hanging rods with hooks.
Hanging and taking down the exhibit
The Fine Arts curator assigned to your exhibit will be present to assist you when you hang and take down your exhibit. Allow a minimum of two-three hours for hanging and for taking down your art.
It is your responsibility to provide and attach labels to art work which link art to a price list, and it is your responsibility to make sure that price lists are available throughout the duration of your exhibit. Some suggestions for labels: removable labels might be attached to the front of glass or acrylic; labels might be attached to the back of frames or to the hanging rods; Avery business cards can be printed on a computer for professional looking labels. The Fine Arts Committee will provide Uhu Tac Removable Adhesive Putty for your use if labels are to be attached to the walls; no other material may be used to attach labels to the walls.
Exhibits are held in the congregation's Fellowship Hall; one small piece of art may also be hung in the foyer above the "Exhibit This Way" sign to help advertise the exhibit.
Opening reception
Artists are encouraged to hold a reception, as this is the occasion in which most sales take place. The reception — including invitations, refreshments, dishes and utensils, and servers — is your responsibility as the artist, and date and time should be scheduled well in advance with the RRUUC office. For receptions artists have use of the foyer and the Fellowship Hall. Note: if you want to use the kitchen, it needs to be reserved separately from the Fellowship Hall. The Fellowship Hall has tables that may be arranged as needed for the reception. Sunday afternoons are strongly recommended as the most suitable and available times for openings. The curator assigned to your exhibit will assist with sales at the reception.
Sales
No later than the time of the opening reception (and preferably before the first Sunday of your exhibit), you must make a list of each piece of art displayed and its price, both for the office and the Fine Arts Committee, and for those viewing the exhibit.
All sales must be accompanied by a purchase order form and a check made out to RRUUC, not to the artist. RRUUC will issue you a check for 80% of this amount after your exhibit closes. Purchase order forms are used for sales, and include the name of the artist, name of artwork, price, and purchaser. These can also be used for those sending in checks after the opening. The Fine Arts Committee curator handling sales at the reception will notify the office of the works sold.
Any sales resulting from the exhibit at RRUUC (even if occurring after the exhibit closes) are subject to the process outlined here and should involve paying 20% to RRUUC.
Publicity
Publicity is a shared responsibility between the artist and the RRUUC Fine Arts Committee.
You are encouraged to produce a professional invitation that you can circulate widely to promote your exhibit and assure participation in your opening reception. In addition, the curator for your exhibit can provide you with a list of media sources and contact information should you wish to publicize your exhibit beyond RRUUC and your personal contacts.
RRUUC will publish notice of your exhibit and opening reception in the River Road eWeekly, in the RRUUC Sunday bulletin, and in the Art Exhibits area of the RRUUC Web site.
Two months before the beginning of your exhibit, you need to provide the following three types of information to the curator for your exhibit:
(1) A brief (40-50 words) statement about your exhibit and art experience so that this information can be included in the River Road eWeekly and in the RRUUC Sunday bulletin.
(2) A longer (one page) statement about your exhibit and art experience for use in the Art Exhibit section of the RRUUC Web site.
The statement for the web site should refer to you in the third person, and should start with your name (e.g., "Jane Artist received her first camera at age 12..."). We prefer that you use your first name throughout the rest of the statement, but in any case all statements of artists in a group show should use the same convention. The statement should be about your exhibit and your art in general. Do not describe the specific sample of your art that is on the page; it is there to illustrate your style and to entice web site visitors to come see your exhibit. If you have a Web site for your art, please include the URL in your statement.
Please send both of your statements in Microsoft Word format, Microsoft's Rich Text Format (RTF), or plain text. Please do not use any styles in your bio, including bold, italics, underlining, justification/alignment, headings, or all-caps; and do use standard fonts.
(3) A digital image of one art work that will appear in your exhibit at RRUUC (for use in the Art Exhibit section of the RRUUC Web site).
In preparing digital images to represent your work, you will need to consider two factors: the quality of the photography, and the quality of the digital images.
If your art was not created digitally, we recommend that you enlist someone who is familiar with photographing artwork and who knows how to light it to its best advantage. It is best not use a single on-camera flash as it's likely to create bright spots or reflections. The photograph should not include any part of the frame or the wall, and the artwork should not be obscured by anything in the environment. Snapshots of your art will not be usable for the web site.
A good JPEG image is sufficient. An image that you submitted in your original application is acceptable also for this purpose if it meets the following criteria. Save the JPEG image with HIGH or HIGHEST quality. If using a Lightroom export, set the quality between 80 and 90. In any case, the size of the resulting image should be under 1 Megabyte. If you don’t know how to downsize an image, send it in Photoshop (psd) or TIFF format. Please don’t use any other format.
It would make our job a little easier if you could embed the sRGB color profile into your images; but if you don't know what that means or don't have a way to do it, don't worry about it.
You must include your surname and the title of the image within the file name of each image that you send us. Also, please do not include spaces, slashes, colons, commas, or capital letters in the file names. It's also a good idea to separate words with underscores. For example, if Jane Artist were going to use her image called "Courtyard View," she would give it a file name of artist_courtyard_view.jpeg.
Payment for works sold
Once the exhibit has been completed and all checks or payments have been received, Donald Martell will prepare a voucher and RRUUC will send a check for 80% of the total sales to the artist. Checks to artists are generally processed within 7 to 10 days of receipt of the Voucher. If you have questions on payment, contact the office (301-229-0400).
Good luck with your exhibit!
Checklist for artists exhibiting at RRUUCAfter being contacted by Fine Arts Committee representative with acceptanceAgree on dates for your exhibit
Two months ahead of the opening Have invitations prepared One month ahead of the opening Send out invitations At the beginning of your exhibit month Hang the exhibit At the opening reception Arrive early to set up food, tables, etc. At the end of your exhibit monthTake down your exhibit Following the exhibitContact the office if you have questions about payment
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