Call for Artists – Three Rivers Open Studios 2023

Timeline of Important Dates

  • Thursday June 1:: Application form closes.
  • Saturday July 1 st: Notifications will be sent (acceptance, decline, or alternate status).
  • Tuesday August 1 st : Show fee due and is non-refundable. (Fee is $100)

Show Times and Days

Show Hours: 10 am to 5 pm on Friday and Saturday; 10 am to 4 pm on Sunday.
Show Days: Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, October 13, 14, and 15, 2023.

Set up time to be worked out between host and guest artist. Artists are not allowed to breakdown or close prior to 4 pm on Sunday (may risk participation in future shows if not compliant).

Jury

This is a juried show. All work, including fine crafts, must be original design and individually made by the artist, and signed when possible. All art is judged on a variety of criteria, including, but not limited to originality, variety, and appropriateness. One or two artists collaborating on one piece constitutes one artist.

Each artist participating in the Three Rivers Open Studios must apply and pay the fee.

Booth/Space Specifications

Tents, tables, chairs, and display equipment are the artist’s responsibility. Due to limited number of inside spaces, artists should be prepared to set up outside. Placement will be made after the jury process is complete. Everything will be done to accommodate artist needs. Host artists are not responsible for guest’s
art of property.

Promotion

This art show will only succeed and grow by the efforts of all artists. All artists must be willing to promote the show through placement of signs, postcards, posters, maps, and the use of social media. All of the money collected is used directly to support and promote the show.

Miscellaneous

A pre-show meeting will be scheduled, and all artists are asked to attend. We will pass out signs, postcards, and maps at that time.

If for any reason you are unable to attend the tour, or the full hours, please notify the open studios co-chairs immediately at openstudios@threeriversguild.com.

Questions

E-mail openstudios@threeriversguild.com. Please refrain from sending emails to planning committee members’ personal email accounts.

Open Studios Co-Chairs:
Jeanne Kelley-Brown
Tamara Scott


The form is now closed. Please check back in April 2024!

Partners in Art Program Is Being Revived

By Lyda Orzen, TRAG Co-President

Partners in Art is making a comeback this year. This program will give our artists the opportunity to get their art out of their studio and up on the walls of Oregon City businesses. The program will be a bit different than the previous program and will be customized per business needs.

We’ll be introducing the program to members of the Oregon City Chamber of Commerce during one of their Good Morning Oregon City meetings.

The Friends of the Library bookstore is the first to welcome artists. Beginning February 1, 2023, Marv Binegar and Susan Schenk will be the first artists to show in the bookstore under this program.

TRAG would like to thank Cathy Rowe and Susan Schenk for updating paperwork and creating marketing materials for this program.

A Return to Juried Art for All TRAG Shows

By Sue Woodworth, TRAG Co-President

When TRAG had its “Gallery and Gift shop” at Singer Hill Café, every new artist or artists with a new medium submitted their art to the “jury committee.”

As we move forward, we will have the jurying process in place for all art shows we present: Spring Fling, Oregon City Festival of the Arts and our Holiday show. All new artists applying to shows for the first time or any artist with new mediums they are wanting to sell will go through the jury process.

Our established jury committee is looking for artist vision, originality, creative intent, mastery of a skill and craftsmanship and is ready to present to the public. We critique with positive feedback and suggestions for additional learning needs.

What part of your art have you made/designed yourself?

  • We are not looking for your art from a class but what you have developed after the class.
  • We love to see jewelry with hand designed items in them. Just stringing beads for a necklace or earrings is not acceptable.
  • No pre-purchased/manufactured items will be accepted to be sold as is.   
  • No copying or adding copyrighted  items.
  • Your art needs to have something you made or totally changed in the way it was made to be used.
  • No items made from a kit.

We will give more information on submitting your art online to us as we get close to our Spring Fling show which is just around the corner.

Thanks….and don’t worry!

Potential Three Rivers Artist Guild Open Studios

By Tamara Scott and Jeanne Kelley-Brown, Open Studios Coordinators

At our member meetings on November 14 (2022) and January 9th, the idea of having a TRAG-run Open Studios was proposed by some members. Jeanne Kelley-Brown and Tamara Scott are spearheading the beginnings of this project and want to assess member interest as well as member participation—we can’t do this alone!

In case you are not familiar with the Open Studios concept, here is a little explanation. Local artists open their home studio spaces for participants to come visit, view and purchase their art. If participating artists have room, they may also host 1-3 other artists who can set up in the house, the garage, or on the driveway, depending on what space is available. Portland Open Studios is HUGE, runs over two weekends, and had over 115 artists participate in 2022.

Damascus Open Studios usually has about 6 studio stops with around 21 artists. Open Studios of Beavercreek used to host two events per year (Spring and Fall) with an average of up to 26 individual artists displaying their works at as many as 14 different studio locations. Sadly, Beavercreek is no longer hosting these events after shutting down during the pandemic. Open Studios is really fun and gives people a chance to see artists in their work environments, have more personal conversations with the artists, and get to see our beautiful surroundings as they travel between studios. Usually there is a drawing for a gift certificate to the studio of the winner’s choice if they visit all of the studios and turn in a card (with signatures from each studio stop) at the end of their studio visit.

Please fill out a brief survey, as soon as possible, to indicate your interest and your level of anticipated participation if this project were to get off the ground. If there is a lot of interest and willing participants, we may be able to have our first Open Studios in the Fall. We could have studios in Oregon City, Milwaukie, West Linn, and perhaps, even Canby.

Here is a list of what would be needed (that we can think of right now!) in order for TRAG to do
this:

  1. Call for Artists (application should include photos of work, questions on if artist is willing to
    have their space be a stop, how many artists can they host).
  2. Jury potential artists
  3. Go to artist studio, etc., to see if the accommodations will work for the show.
  4. We need signs with numbers–4 for each spot
  5. Postcards with a map included
  6. Flyers with a map and list of artists and medium at each stop
  7. Social Media
  8. Meeting with artists (probably 2)
  9. Fee for artist

We would probably need a committee of at least 6-8 people to do this.

Are you in??!!


Proposed Annual Dues Increase

By Tamara Scott, TRAG President

The TRAG Board has been discussing increasing the cost of our annual dues. No one is sure when the last dues increase was, so it is obviously time! We also wanted to start offering some incentives for members who volunteer their time to help TRAG run and continue to provide three awesome show opportunities for our artists as well as community artists. After much discussion at our Board meeting, we have decided on the following:

1. The new membership fee will be $40 for the year.

2. GOLD MEMBERSHIP! All Board members (elected and appointed positions) will automatically become Gold Members since they volunteer their time for the entire year. You can become a Gold Member after volunteering for TRAG activities 3 times. 

Gold Member perks are:

     a. No jury fee for any of our shows.
     b. 25% discount on booth fees for all of our TRAG shows throughout the year.

You may be asking yourself, “what are the volunteer opportunities?” Well, here are some examples of volunteer opportunities with TRAG:

a. Help set up and clean up for our monthly meetings. Arrive 30 minutes before the meeting starts and rearrange the tables and chairs (the tables and chairs are always set up in a horseshoe fashion, so the tables need to be moved to the side and chairs need to be set up in rows). After the meeting, the tables and chairs need to be put back as they were found, and all folding chairs put back on the chair racks in the back of the room.

b. Run for and get elected to a Board position (President, VP, Secretary, or Treasurer)

c. Get appointed to a non-elected Board position (membership coordinator, volunteer coordinator, public-relations coordinator, website coordinator, art gallery coordinator(s) (once we have a gallery again), marketing, Oregon City Fesitval of the Arts chair, Holiday Show chair.

d. Volunteer to help with one of our shows:

  • Be a part of the show committee
  • Place signs around town before the show
  • Pick up signs after the show
  • Volunteer the day of the show to booth sit for artists so they can take a break, deliver water and snacks to artists, any other duties needed by the
  • show committee.
  • Work at a booth representing TRAG at the Oregon City Farmer’s Market, West Linn Wednesday Markets, Concerts in the Park, etc. (These are opportunities available to TRAG and could help increase our membership, but we haven’t taken advantage of them yet due to lack of volunteers to help
  • with these activities).

e. Write a grant!

These are just some of the volunteer opportunities with TRAG. We need to increase member involvement in all of our activities which will, in turn, grow our amazing organization!

We will be voting on this proposed dues increase at our November meeting, so please plan on attending, or email me (president@threeriversartistguild.com) your vote before the meeting on November 7 th . If you have any questions or concerns about this proposed change, please don’t hesitate to come to the meeting to discuss your questions and/or concerns, or email me.

Donate to the 2022 OCFOTA Silent Auction

By Cathy Rowe, OCFOTA Silent Auction Coordinator

Would you love to have your artwork shown at the Oregon City Festival of the Arts, but cannot have a full booth this year? We are opening up the silent auction for donations from anyone in the Three Rivers Artist Guild that would like to donate a piece to the Silent Auction. This means that your piece would be on display in the Silent Auction tent at the front of the Festival for Saturday and Sunday (Aug. 13 and 14). This can be a great way to get exposure and feedback on your artwork, while also helping the Three Rivers Artist Guild to grow and thrive. If you would like to donate a piece of artwork, print, art class, or something else please contact Cathy Rowe at cathyrowe.art@gmail.com with an image of the piece, title, description, size, and value. Cathy will arrange artwork drop-off or a pick-up as needed.

We already have a lot of great artwork and community donations that you can see here: https://app.galabid.com/ocfota22 , but we wanted to include as many of our great member artists as possible. Please contact Cathy by August 10 if you would like to have a piece included in the OCFOTA Silent Auction. Bidding opens August 1 and will close August 14 at 4pm.

Survey for the TRAG Membership, Part 2

This is one final survey that we ask you to participate in. The response to the April survey was great, now we need to narrow things down for what to offer the rest of this year.  Please see below one final survey where we’re asking you to mark your top three topics for meetings, top three topics for workshops (still working on whether we can do those this year or not), three top community ideas, and top 2 long-range “dreams”.  Please, please, please (☺) participate in this last survey to help us build a great TRAG program for the remainder of this year!

Tamara Scott,
TRAG President


Workshop ideas: (Please pick your top three choices)(Required)
Meeting Ideas: (Please pick your top three choices)
Community Ideas: (Please pick your top three choices)
Dream Ideas (long-term projects/ideas): (Please pick your top two choices)
This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Survey for the TRAG Membership

Hello TRAG Members!!  We, your TRAG board members REALLY need your input!  Not being able to meet in person for two years has taken a toll on our art guild.  Overall, I think we’ve done a fairly good job keeping things going for two years, but still…..we’ve taken a hit.  Our membership numbers are down.  We are not alone in this….many organizations have been affected, and some have even folded.  We certainly are hoping that TRAG will continue and flourish in the coming year(s).  This, however, depends a great deal on participation of the membership.  This is one way that you can participate and have a say in how we move forward as a guild.  We’re hoping this will be an exciting time of “re-imagining” the guild as we begin to gather together again.  Previous surveys have only generated around 4 or 5 people responding.  My hope is that we get at least 50% of members responding.  Will you be one of those?  I sure hope so!  Thanks, in advance, for participating.

Tamara Scott
TRAG President


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