A note from PSA President Jimmy Wright PSA wishes you a happy healthy, prosperous, and productive 2015! 2014 was a very good year! Dear members, supporters, and friends, 2014 has been a year of accomplishments for the Pastel Society of America. We’ve met many goals in technology, project planning, membership, and international focus. And most important: We have been financially well managed. The oldest pastel society in America has been rebranded to reflect the quality focus of the organization. We owe our new contemporary logo to former board member Christine Ivers. The jewel in the PSA crown is, as always, the Annual Exhibition. Thanks to research done by board member Peggy Rose, we successfully used an online entry system for receiving and processing 1,222 entries in the 42nd Annual Exhibition: Enduring Brilliance! By so doing, the organization was able to make use of the expertise and informed aesthetic eyes of the selection jury, three Master Pastelists (MP) from different regions of the country—California, Vermont, and Alabama. Because they can jury online, jurors no longer have to be in one place at the same time, opening up the jury to a more diverse geographical pool. Also, by having Master Pastelist jurors, we ensure that MPs entering the Annual are juried by their peers. The online entry service streamlined the payment of fees, the organization of images, and the notification process, eliminating much of the paperwork that had previously fallen to the PSA office manager. We had a heartwarmingly successful 42nd Annual Exhibition! Attendance soared during all three events of the big weekend. Record numbers attended the reception and tour of the exhibit given by Liz Haywood-Sullivan. The Grand Gallery heaved with vendors and customers at the Materials Fair. Vendors occupied 16 tables this year, up from 8 last year, and reported significantly increased sales, as much as 25 percent. This was due to the innovative reorganization of the materials fair by board member Arlene Richman. This year, board member Susan Story organized an addition to the fair—a free portfolio review for Associate Members. This well-received program was held in the Sculpture Court, adjoining the Grand Gallery, and included Master Pastelists Wende Caporale, Maceo Mitchell, and Bill Creevy volunteering their time and expertise. In addition, a full house of 170 PSA members and friends attended the annual banquet in the Grand Gallery. An SRO crowd thronged the awards ceremony in 2014. The artist members of the board greeted each guest as she/he entered the Grand Gallery of the National Arts Club. Cash and material prizes of $32,000 were distributed, the largest amount of any pastel exhibition or medium-dedicated exhibit in America and the world. To ensure the continuing vitality of donations, board member Carrie Raeburn has been tagged to be the awards committee leader, a new post. I am happy to report that the National Arts Club has reassured PSA of its continued commitment to PSA’s education and exhibition programs thanks to the leadership and patronage of NAC President Chris Poe and Fine Arts Committee Chair Dianne B. Bernhard. In 2014, nine members of PSA reached the highest level of membership status—Signature Master Pastelist—the new benchmark of professionalism in pastel. The only way to achieve MP status is to receive three awards in the PSA Annual Exhibition. There is no time limit on receiving the awards. There is no aesthetic or political influence from the Board of Governors in awarding this status. The juror of awards is unconnected to PSA and occupies an independent status as an art/pastel expert working in the field within the New York metropolitan area. In 2014, international pastel expert Marjorie Shelley of the Metropolitan Museum of Art was awards juror. Another expert will be chosen for 2015. PSA ends the year in the black having sustained an increase in income from membership dues and from educational programs. The school has scheduled 15 workshops in 2015, including the first PSA sponsored destination workshop in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, with Richard McKinley. Our class attendance numbers have remained stable, while workshop attendance has increased. We all thank board member Maceo Mitchell for his amazing job of revitalizing the PSA commitment to education. PSA treasurer, corporate executive, and PSA founder Flora Giffuni’s daughter, JoAnn Wellner, has been instrumental in resolving and rationalizing all PSA accounts. As a result of the account restructuring, the Board of Governors met its primary responsibility of financial due diligence by restoring restricted bequest accounts that in the past had been mixed with unrestricted funds and by closing restricted bequest accounts that had been depleted of funds. Now funds are clearly earmarked for the requested projects. An appropriate investment philosophy was defined for each fund. To further ensure that future boards follow due diligence, the board passed a motion to have money spent on special projects subjected to board approval, thus preventing any president from indulging in vanity projects and from being sole decision-maker regarding money distributions. This year, we welcomed four new members to our energized board: Susan Story (NY), Winnie Tsai (NY), Carrie Raeburn (AL), and Maria Marino (MD). We continue to strive for geographical diversity on the board. For the statistics-minded among you: We now have 643 Signature Members (including 146 MPs, 13 deceased); 482 Associate Members; 7 Supporters Total: 1,132 (up 57 members from last year) The annual: 184 entries accepted; 180 exhibited (1 damaged in shipment, 3 not received); 56 first-time exhibitors; 26 first-time award winners, 14 of whom were also first-time exhibitors; 2 out of 3 top awards went to first-time exhibitors; 6 out of top 14 awards were to first-time winners, 5 of whom were also first-time exhibitors. Juried PSA exhibitors included works by 24 Associates, 78 Signatures, 36 Master Pastelists, PSA is unique in its globally recognized position as leader in pastels. In October, nine invited western artists and I participated in the First China (Suzhou) Pastel Invitational Exhibition held in Suzhou, China, sponsored by the Suzhou Pastel Academic Research Center as a subsidiary of the China Watercolor Artists Association. Of the ten international artists, seven were PSA signature members. The ten were Alan Flattmann, PSA (Degas Pastel Society), Gwenneth Barth-White, PSA (France), Liz Haywood-Sullivan, PSA (IAPS), Richard McKinley, PSA (IAPS), Jason Chang, PSA (North America Pastel Artists Association), Isabelle Lim, PSA (Singapore), Jimmy Wright, PSA, Jose del Riego (Spain), Aurelio Rodriquez (Spain), Vincente Romero Redondo (Spain). The organizers of the China event expressed interest in bringing western artists to their country to lead workshops. The logistics of this would have to be worked out. And while all pastel societies in China are subsidiaries of the watercolor society, PSA is envied for its self-sufficiency. We look forward to 2015 and to new goals for PSA to achieve. We plan a new website funded as a special project to reflect PSA’s role as the foremost pastel society. We look forward to improving the membership application process by making use of electronic means. We are also working to improve the online Annual entry submission system. And important beyond measure is the generation of a business plan, which will outline our current and projected financial situation, along with plans for new special programs as we go forward. It will also outline plans for grant writing and fund raising/sponsorship of events. As part of this effort, we plan to update our bylaws and to write a procedures manual so that any interim president or future board member can use it as a resource to fulfill her/his obligations, as well as those of the office manager. Social media and computer communications continue to play a major role in the visibility and outreach of PSA to member and non-member pastel artists. Board member Leslie Levy composes the PSA news eBlasts that you periodically find in your email in-box. The popular PSA-Facebook Group has grown to a membership of 4,675 pastel artists worldwide. Joining together, the PSA family can make 2015 a year of pastel discovery and achievement. Each member of the board fulfills multiple responsibilities too numerous to list. In addition to the governors mentioned already, I want to thank Robert Carsten for supervising the publication of Pastelagram and the Annual catalog, Winnie Tsai for coordinating membership applications, Julie Hopkins for revitalizing the school raffle, and Maria Marino for planning and supervising the future upgrade of the studio and office facilities. I am deeply grateful for the wise counsel of my seasoned executive board, including governors Wende Caporale and Duane Wakeham, who advise the president on matters of organization, ethics, protocol, and communications. We look forward to another successful year, enriched by our friends, our artistic community, and the medium we love.
Posted on: Tue, 23 Dec 2014 18:49:32 +0000
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