Artists are rejected all the time.
We submit.
We wait.
We receive the no.
And I am learning to celebrate it.
During my CritLab fellowship, artist and curator Patricia Miranda offered a reframe that shifted me:
Celebrate the rejection.
Because rejection means you participated.
It means you answered the call.
It means you allowed yourself to be seen.
I recently submitted my Mummy Bears to a call centered on grief. That submission, not the outcome, was the milestone.
The Mummy Bears are for me and my dad. Every year on my birthday, March 11, he gave me a teddy bear and called me Bear. After dementia took his memory and he passed at Thanksgiving 2024, I began wrapping the bears. Preserving what I could.
Submitting that work was the next step in processing my grief.
The no does not change the ritual.
It does not change the love.
It simply confirms that I am participating.
As my birthday approaches, the day I feel his absence most, I am proud that I pressed submit. That I let my grief breathe outside the studio.
Rejection is not failure.
It is proof that I am still making.
Still risking tenderness.
Still moving forward.
And that is worth celebrating.
