I had a rough morning on Friday, not only because I stupidly missed my flight to Minneapolis, but because two grant applications were rejected and announced on the same morning within minutes of one another. The one I had been aware of, but the second came like a blow. I have never been someone to fetishize rejection lettersor see them as a reflection of my effort, no matter how failed.
Not taking them as a stab to the heart is something I really struggle with, in part because I dislike paying $40 for an online form that I also have to work multiple hours to fill out, which ultimately results in nothing good happening. It’s like a triple threat of bureaucratic irritation.
The grant that really got me was an award specifically for painters. This year I really thought I had a shot at it because what was I if not a painter? While it’s not fair to quantify 20+ years of sacrificing for my art into one singular, albeit sizeable award that would have lifted me up out of the gutter of credit card debt and rent money instability for the better part of the year while I prepared for a solo show, it for some reason felt like it would be a major boon to my career.
I had already applied multiple times to said award and had even hired a grant writer this time. I was ready to make my acceptance speech. Never had I submitted a better application, nor had I had a more urgent need for the support at any point in my career. The painting gods would deliver, I was sure of it.
And yet. Like most things we try to plan or think we are entitled to, the fates had other plans.
I read the form letter in a too-long line for a bagel telling me that no reason would be given for the zero grant money I was being offered and silently cursed the nameless judges who passed my application over.
I quickly tried to imagine their faces to humanize them and feel some kind of compassion for the Herculean task. I have been on a curatorial jury before and it can be very hard to decide when there are so many talented people’s work in front of you in thumbnails on a screen. The realities of decision-making on a jury panel are very complex and messy. In my experience, it’s usually a debate about which art is enjoyable and the most aligned to the voice of an institution or gallery, versus whose art is objectively better.
But still.
I am not someone who enjoys printing out my rejection letters and keeping them in a file folder like Sylvia Plath famously did. Maybe it’s my Capricorn moon, but once that sh*t happens I want it to disappear, like, yesterday. I want to wipe it clean from my memory like a goldfish and start over with no recollection of it.
I don’t want to fail up, although I like the idea of a salon de refusés. No, I want to move forward with the Slideroom page gathering dust in my rearview mirror.
What do you do with your rejection letters? How do you get over the worst ones? What do our reactions say about us? (I know I take them way too seriously.)