Artist Open Calls
TAKE A SEAT: The Artist’s Eye
An ArtWRKD 4th Anniversary Soirée Fundraiser
One chair. Endless ways of seeing.
For ArtWRKD’s 4th Anniversary Soirée, we are inviting artists to transform a 6-inch clear acrylic chair into an original work of art.
Paint it. Wrap it. Build onto it. Deconstruct it. Stitch it. Sculpt it. Obscure it. Illuminate it. Make it strange. Make it beautiful. Make it unmistakably yours.
The chair is intentionally ordinary—a familiar object we encounter every day without really seeing it. We want to know what happens when an artist sees it.
This project is about the artist’s eye: the ability to look at the everyday and imagine something entirely different. It reflects the larger idea behind ArtWRKD’s anniversary fundraiser—that artists do not simply make objects; they change the way we see the world around us.
THE CHALLENGE
Each participating artist will receive the same 6-inch transparent acrylic chair as their starting point.
There are no restrictions on medium. Artists are encouraged to work beyond the surface of the chair and consider form, material, scale, texture, narrative, illusion, absence, transformation, and unexpected intervention.
The original chair may remain recognizable—or disappear almost entirely.
The only requirement: start with the chair. Where it goes from there is up to you.
COMPLETED WORK + DELIVERY
All transformed chairs must be completed and received by ArtWRKD by November 8, 2026.
Completed work may be shipped to the ArtWRKD gallery or dropped off during regular gallery hours. Artists are responsible for ensuring that shipped work arrives by the November 8 deadline.
The works will be presented together as an installation during the ArtWRKD 4th Anniversary Soirée, creating a collective portrait of how differently artists can see the exact same object.
SALES + FUNDRAISING
Each artist may determine what percentage of the proceeds from the sale of their work they would like to donate to ArtWRKD in support of the fundraiser.
Artists may choose to donate a percentage of the sale, up to 100%.
For artists who choose not to make an additional donation of proceeds, ArtWRKD’s gallery commission will apply: 70% of the sale price will be paid to the artist and 30% will be retained by ArtWRKD as the gallery fee.
Proceeds retained or donated to ArtWRKD will support the organization’s transition to a nonprofit and support it's mission, including artists, exhibitions, education, programming, and the continued development of the ArtWRKD creative community.
THE QUESTION
What do you see that the rest of us don't?
Take an ordinary object.
Show us your world.
OPEN CALL — TAKE A SEAT
ArtWRKD 4th Anniversary Soirée
Transform the ordinary.
Reveal the artist’s eye.
A WOMA/EN'S PROJECT
An ArtWRKD Open Call
WOMAN.
A word inherited.
A word assigned.
A word claimed.
A word that has carried different weight depending on who is speaking, who is listening, and when in history the question is being asked.
A WOMA/EN'S PROJECT begins there.
Not with an answer, but with an inquiry.
What does it mean to move through the world as a woman now?
What have we carried forward?
What have we put down?
What remains unnamed?
ArtWRKD invites artists to consider womanhood not as a fixed subject, but as a place of departure.
The work does not need to explain itself.
It does not need to be political.
It does not need to be personal.
It does not need to be beautiful, angry, feminine, strong, vulnerable—or anything else we have been taught to expect.
It simply needs to come from somewhere true.
We are interested in the spaces between what is visible and what is understood. Between inheritance and invention. Between the body we inhabit and the ways the world reads it.
The quiet things.
The uncomfortable things.
The things we have learned to carry so well they are almost invisible.
And the things we are only beginning to name.
THE CALL
A WOMA/EN'S PROJECT is open to work across mediums and disciplines.
Painting. Sculpture. Photography. Fiber. Installation. Film. Sound. Performance. Written word. Found object. Wearable work. Mixed media. Work that does not fit neatly into a category.
Existing and newly created work will be considered.
Outsider and self-taught artists are welcomed and strongly encouraged to submit.
Formal training is not a prerequisite for having something to say.
We are interested in instinct. In perspective. In work made because, somehow, it needed to be made.
Artists of all gender identities may submit work that enters thoughtfully into the conversation.
SUBMISSION
Artists may submit up to three works for consideration.
Please include images of the work, title, medium, dimensions and year, along with a brief artist statement and a few words about your relationship to the work being submitted.
Do not feel obligated to explain the work completely.
Leave us somewhere to enter.
A WOMA/EN'S PROJECT
There will be contradictions here.
There should be.
No single exhibition could hold the entirety of what it means to be a woman.
Perhaps that is the point.
We are interested in what happens when these works are placed beside one another—when one experience interrupts another, when something deeply personal becomes unexpectedly familiar, when the space between two works becomes part of the conversation.
A WOMA/EN'S PROJECT is not intended to define womanhood.
It is an attempt to sit with it.
To look.
To listen.
And to leave some of the questions unanswered.
MARCH 2027