You never know

Apply to juried shows, because you never know who will see your work.  That's the advice I recently received from a keynote speaker at an artists' convention.  So I decided to take his advice and began to enter some shows.  What's a juried show or competition?  Generally, you must submit photos of your work which are reviewed by a committee.  Your work is accepted based on technical skill, creativity, the medium and/or other requirements.   An application and the images are sent to the organization.  It was a bit of a learning curve for me, especially understanding image size requirements and each juried show has varied requirements.  One on-line art application service that many organizations use is Zapp https://www.zapplication.org/  Recently I juried into a local gallery show which had their own on-line application.  It was fairly straight forward and inexpensive.  Oh yes, I forgot that part!  Most shows cost money.  This show, with the theme "Red", cost $30.00.  I sent in two pieces (strawberries and cherries) and both were accepted.  Now my work will be seen for a month in a great gallery Soulard Art Market http://sam.soulardartmarket.org/  You never know who might see my work and where that will lead...