I recently spent a day digging through files and emails and websites to create a failure CV: a list of all the things I applied for but did not ultimately get. It’s a DV: Defectis Vitae! I got started on this after a discussion with friends about regret, destiny and whether its better to live with “no regrets man!” and keep plowing forward, or if it’s better to reflect on shortcomings and rejections. Certainly, no one wants to wallow. But in a culture where hustling is everything and so much emphasis is placed on building a record of success, I think it’s instructive and helpful to spend some time here and there reflecting about things that didn’t go as we had hoped.
A few years ago, a lot of people in the arts were talking about “failure” in the studio. For better or worse, it became kind of a buzzword: “embracing failure”. I think some of this was semantics, since the Bob Ross “happy accident” in the studio has been around forever. This conversation around failure didn’t really extend much beyond the studio and into the sometimes grueling, often expensive realm of applying for grad schools, jobs, exhibitions and grants, where embracing failure is much harder to bear than an errant brushstroke. Still, I found this surprisingly inspiring. Here’s are ten things I learned from creating a failure CV:
Track everything. In the process of organizing all my “failures” I came across one opportunity that I had unwittingly let slip through the email cracks, and another opportunity that I had participated in and was super cool but I had forgotten about entirely, so it never made it into my actual CV! These two things were evidence that while I generally do a good job tracking my successes for my CV, the practice of confirming and tracking rejections has the potential to make you even more organized and, paradoxically, can actually lead to opportunities that you may otherwise miss.
A lot of it is dumb luck. it is difficult to say with any certainty why I was selected for some opportunities and not others. Luck is such a huge factor and is so obvious that we often discount it, but we shouldn’t. Accepting the role of luck in our lives should temper both our sense of disappointment during perceived failures and our ego during perceived successes.
Our failures are less than we imagine. Getting yourself out there knowing there’s a strong possibility of not hearing anything back or getting one of those “we regret to inform you” or “there were so many high quality applicants” emails can be tedious. So much so that one rejection can imprint itself on us in an outsized way. When I look at my DV, I realize that I just haven’t applied to nearly as many things as I thought I did—it just feels that way! I need to spend less time on social media.
Building a career takes time. My view is that it takes about five years to get good at something, and then about five more years before people start to notice that you’ve become good at it. This five or ten years of growth may be ideal—a meteoric rise or a long incubation can both leave creative people feeling burnt out and tempted to jump ship.
You weren’t ready (and that’s okay). For a lot of things that ended up on my failure resume, my ideas or work was underdeveloped and looking back, some of my writing was just cringeworthy. For those opportunities I am actually now fortunate I was not selected and did not have to share weird underdeveloped ideas or projects with the world. Grateful I did not have to exhibit something that wasn’t quite there. Often later, when I tried again for the same opportunity, I got it!
Some rejections are disguised gifts. It’s a cliche but it’s true. I now totally understand why I was not selected for many things on the list—it was not a good fit, meaning I probably would not have enjoyed myself anyway. Some would have altered the course of my life in ways that are totally unknowable and thus possibly quite negative. For those truly big life-changing outcomes that hinge on the bipolar acceptance or rejection, hindsight can be even clearer—
For some opportunities it only takes one “yes”! Maybe you’ve heard this one before but it’s true: when it comes to graduate school or full time employment, it honestly doesn’t matter how many rejections you get, as long as you get one yes. I’ve been fortunate to land my “dream job” (twice) and in graduate school, I met the love of my life and made amazing friends. So most of the rejections on my list are wholly irrelevant.
You only live once. Doing this made me appreciative for the life I get to live now. all those rejections were just as important to determining my path as the good things that came. they’re all little micro determinations that shape our reality, and the unknown multiverses, while intellectually or emotionally fascinating, are just not relevant to our present reality. Maybe, looking failures in the face can also help us to…
Recognize our smallness. The world can sometimes feels like one giant rejection engine. But that’s not accurate. The truth is, a lot of the world is totally and completely unaware of what kind of art or work you’re doing. it’s those rare serendipitous beams of light that puncture the cloud insulating you from all of it, they find you or you find and help propel your life and career forward in meaningful ways. We work our lives mostly alone and spend so much time trying to be seen, to be noticed, that it’s good to take a moment and appreciate these little beams in the fog.
We are more than the sum of our successes and failures. A failure CV is like anti-matter: when coming into contact with a CV, the DV has the curious effect of almost destroying the importance of lists of achievements. In part because I’m working in academia, the CV has such a ridiculous level of importance that it is like a form of currency: it should maybe have holograms and anti-theft technology embossed around it (free conceptual art project idea for you!). But neither our professional successes or failures get anywhere close to defining who we are and the impact that we really have in the world, particularly when it comes to the little things—the acts of kindness, attending to our relationships, enjoying a good meal—that make life truly worth living.
It’s okay to fail. Success looks different for everyone, and knwing failure helps us to define it for ourselves. We need to normalize professional rejection.
The failure CV has allowed me to see at a glance how my motivations have shifted, and where I might want to go back and try something again with greater experience and perspective. Fundamentally, I think we don’t give ourselves enough time and space to reflect on both the good and bad and to fully accept and embrace the path we are on at this very moment. Reflection creates clarity, and clarity creates the space and calm required for doing fulfilling work. The more you work at a career in the arts doing the kind of work that fills you up, the more opportunities come about organically. Good luck!
Joe Hedges
Defectis Vitæ: Selected Failures
Early Academic Failures
1994-1998
Extreme Academic Underachievement, Bishop Fenwick High School, Middletown, OH
2000
Dropped out of Community College, Miami University Middletown, Middletown, OH
Graduate School Denials
2011
University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, MFA program, Honolulu, HI
Columbia University, MFA program, New York, NY
Ohio State University, MFA program, Columbus, OH
Arizona State University, MFA program, Tempe, AZ
Indiana University, MFA program, Bloomington, IN
University of California Los Angeles, MFA program, Los Angeles, CA
School of the Art Institute of Chicago, MFA program, Chicago, IL
Job Application Rejections
2015
Assistant Professor and Coordinator of Foundation, Department of Art and Art History at California States University, Chico, CA
Assistant Professor, Photographic Technology at Palomar College, Palomar, CA
Faculty - Art Instructor (Temporary), position cancelled, South Texas College, McAllen, TX
Assistant Professor of Painting & Drawing, Western New Mexico University, Silver City, NM
Digital/New Media, Tenure Track, Associate Professor, Kutztown University, Kutztown, PA
Assistant Professor Painting/Foundation, Guilford College, Greensboro, NC
Assistant Professor in Painting & Drawing, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT
Assistant Professor of Art Studio/Foundations Coordinator, Coastal Carolina University, Conway, SC
2010
Musical Instrument Collection Technician, Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati, OH
Exhibition and Residency Rejections
2022
Well Well Projects, two-person exhibition proposal rejected, Portland, OR
Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park Residency Program, National Parks Arts Foundation, Volcano, HI
Purdue University, Solo Exhibition, West Lafayette, IN
Boston University, Solo Exhibition, Boston, MA
The Frank, Solo Exhibition, Pembroke Pines, FL
516 ARTS, Solo Exhibition Proposal, Albuquerque, NM
North Dakota State University, Solo Exhibition, Fargo, ND
2021
Marble House, family residency program, rejected, Dorset, VT
Colarworks, family residency program, Granville, NY
2019
Aggregate Space Gallery, Solo exhibition, Oakland, CA
Gallery 110, 10th Annual Juried Exhibition, Seattle, WA
Vox Populi, Group Exhibition, Philadelphia, PA
Target Gallery, Solo Exhibition, Alexandria, VA
Art In General, Group Exhibition, New York, NY
Site Brooklyn, Group Exhibition, New York, NY
Dedo Maranville Fine Arts Gallery, Solo Exhibition, Valdosta, GA
Dorsky Museum, Solo Exhibition, New York, NY
Smack Mellon, Solo Exhibition, New York, NY
2018
Antenna Open Call, Solo Exhibition
Torpedo Factory, Solo Exhibition
Dedo Maranville Fine Arts Gallery, Solo Exhibition, Valdosta State University, Valdosta, GA
South Bend Museum of Art, Solo Exhibition, South Bend, IN
Gallery One, Solo Exhibition, Ellensburg, WA
COCA Center on Contemporary Art, Solo Exhibition, Seattle, WA
Demo Projects, Solo Exhibition, Springfield, IL
National Portrait Gallery, Juried Exhibition, Washington DC
New Lenses, Juried Exhibition International Video Art, Syracuse, NY
Santa Cruz Art Museum, Solo Exhibition, Santa Cruz, CA
Davis Art Center, Solo Exhibition, Davis, CA
One Grand Gallery, Solo Exhibition, Portland, OR
Dublin Arts Council Gallery, Solo Exhibition, Dublin, OH
Maria V Howard Arts Center at the Imperial Centre, Solo Exhibition, Rocky Mount, NC
KSpace Contemporary, Solo Exhibition, Corpus Christi, TX
Color: Primary to Tertiary, Juried Exhibition, Site Brooklyn, New York, NY
Re:artiste,TRANSFORMATION, Juried Exhibition, New York, NY
Rogue Art Gallery, Solo Exhibition, Medford, OR
Inner Space METERIA MEDICA, Juried Exhibition, Dallas, TX
Gallery 110, 8th Annual Juried Exhibition, Seattle, WA
2017
Introductions 2018, Trestle Gallery, New York, NY
European Media Art Festival, A Curious Inventory, Osnabrueck, Netherlands
MacLaren Art Center, Solo Exhibition, Ontario, CA
The Center for Contemporary Art, Juried Exhibition, Bedminster, NJ
David Brewer Center, Juried Exhibition, Berkley, CA
2016
University Art Gallery at Western Illinois University, Solo Exhibition, Macomb, IL
Southfirst, Solo Exhibition, New York, NY
Westbank Gallery, Solo Exhibition, London, England
The Suburban, Solo Exhibition, Milwaukee, WI
2015
Visual Arts Exchange: The Cube, Group Exhibition, Raleigh, NC
Portland Unknown Film Festival, Portland, OR
Portland International Film Festival, Portland, OR
Stockholm Experimental Animation Film Festival, Stockholm, Sweeden
Negah International Film Festival, Waikoloa, HI
Los Angeles International Underground Film Festival, Los Angeles, CA
Manhattan Film Festival, New York, NY
Atlanta Film Festival, Atlanta, GA
Grants, Fellowships & Press Rejections
2021
Hopper Prize
2020
Rome Prize, American Academy in Rome, Rome, Italy
Betty Bowen Award, Seattle, WA
Hopper Prize
Grants for Visual Artists, Harpo Foundation, Miami, FL
Arts Innovator Award, Artist Trust, Seattle, WA
Shunpike, Amazon Artist Residency Program, Seattle, WA
Artist Grant, artistgrant.org
2019
Maake Magazine
Spokane Arts Grant Awards (SAGA), Spokane, WA
Witness Magazine, Article
Allegory Ridge Journal, Article
High Shelf Press, Article
Fellowship Award, Artist Trust, Seattle, WA
Create! Magazine, Article
Dialogist Journal, Article
2018
Frame & Frequency 4 Vol. 2, VisArts
2017
GAP Grant, Artist Trust, Seattle, WA
2016
Inter-, Trans- Multi-, College Art Association Individual Paper Submission
Painting as Media Technology, College Art Association, Individual Paper Submission
Empty Kingdom, Article