Compete Velvet: A Call for Works About, Of, or By the Color Black
Opportunity Description
International Deadline: May 24, 2026 – The Cincinnati based non-profit arts organization and gallery, Manifest, invites visual artists and designers to submit original works exploring or using the variance, darkness, and graphic power of the color black. Open to all traditional and non-traditional genre and media.
The color black is full and empty, both the absence of and the completeness of color.
Darkness is, on one hand, an unknowable void: cold, blind, and full of shadows.
Alternately, it is the absorption of the entire spectrum, a glutton for light, radiating heat like summer asphalt melting the soles of your shoes, or black sands the sole of your feet.
Either devoid of or too full of light, the color black is hard to qualify. It obscures in its entirety, offers decisive clarity in binary with its opposite, and rich nuance in the range of shadows it allows to escape.
Black is particularly evocative given that we can explore the velvet of darkness with the sensory pleasure offered by gliding oily graphite across a page, firing stark and shining glazes, painting with brushes sated with ink, or cracking charcoal between our fingers as we draw.
VELVET is a call for works made exploring or using the variance, darkness, and graphic power of the color black.
On display August 14 – September 11, 2026.
ELIGIBILITY
VELVET is open to everyone internationally. The only limitation is that entries must represent original works which address the broad theme described above. Open to all traditional and non-traditional genre and media.
HONORARIA
Each participating exhibitor will receive a $50 honorarium. The honorarium has no strings attached (other than full participation in the relevant exhibit). It is a modest thank-you for collaborating with us as we chart our future.
$9,000 IN GRAND JURY AWARDS
For our current season the Grand Jury Award format will result in the awarding of $1,000 to one work during each of our nine exhibition periods… see more.
JURY & CURATOR
Manifest’s selection process involves a complex two-part system. This exhibit will be juried by an anonymous several member panel of professional and academic advisors with a broad range of expertise relative to art and design
PUBLICATION
Manifest Press will produce a high quality hard-cover publication documenting each entire season of exhibits, artists, and works shown. This continues Manifest’s commitment to long-term documentation and dissemination of our projects, and the expansion of physical exhibits into a broader geography and time frame, while also bringing all exhibits together under one cover each year to create a better product which will be more valuable to the public, teachers, libraries, and exhibiting artists.
ENTRY FEE
$45 for up to three entries submitted. $5 per each additional entry.
APPLY ONLINE
Visit Manifest Gallery online to Apply.
Notifications sent by email to all entrants by the end of the day July 6, 2026.
SALES
Artworks are not required to be for sale in order to be included in our exhibitions. All work, unless indicated as not for sale (NFS), will be available for sale during exhibit. Manifest Gallery will retain a commission of 30% of the sale price on artwork sold during the exhibition.
INSURANCE
Works will be insured while on gallery premises. Insurance covers theft, vandalism, damage caused by gallery patrons or staff.
Visit Manifest Gallery online for complete details and to Apply.
About:
Manifest Creative Research Gallery and Drawing Center is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization located in East Walnut Hills in Cincinnati, Ohio. We serve as a venue for the display and experience of insightful, thought provoking art and design, and functions as a hub for creative research and innovation at all levels of artistic endeavor.
Manifest Gallery
2727 Woodburn Avenue
East Walnut Hills
Cincinnati, Ohio 45206
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