JURY PROCESS
      
Jurors
Every year the Festival Committee selects a different panel of jurors selected from a pool of names suggested by the Board of directors, The Mill Valley Fall Arts Festival Committee and from within the community. The panel is composed of professional artists, educators, and gallery owners with a balanced understanding of media.
Categories
Each year the jury views approximately five hundred sets of slides. The jury makes their selection from the following categories: painting, graphics/prints and drawings, sculpture, functional ceramics, sculptural ceramics, glass, clothing, fiber / paper (not wearable), jewelry: non-precious metals and precious metals, woodwork, leather, photography, toys, "other" (for work that does not fit into the above-mentioned categories) and mixed-media (two or more media).

Five Slides
To ensure anonymity, each applicant is assigned a number used throughout the jurying process. The panels view all five slides simultaneously. The viewing sequence (left to right) is decided by the applicant who indicates the sequence on the entry form. Slides are shown once to review all work submitted in a particular category, then a second time to score each set of slides within that category.
Jury System and Scores
The applicant is not identified, and critical or editorial comments which might influence other jurors are not allowed. If a juror desires technical information, dimensions or a description of the materials used, the one-sentence description supplied by the artist on the Entry Form is read. There are several factors that can affect an individual artist's total point score:
  • Different panels of jurors have differing opinions in making comparative judgment on the quality of work within a particular category.
  • The number of artists being juried in a specific category can vary widely from year to year. These numbers alone can influence the results of comparative evaluation in that category.
The same artist who may apply with the same slides in the same category for several successive years may be accepted in some years and not in others. For example, the score of 20 in one year may be considered high. That same score in another year may be low compared to the rest of the category. The Committee, therefore, feels that the individual numerical scores can be deceptive and relative only to that year of application.

The jurors score each set of slides 1,2,3,4,5,6,7. (We have adopted this scale, instead of the 1,2,3,4, and 5 scoring system formerly used, with the aim of ruling out random chance and providing a wider midrange.) These scores are tabulated by an experienced crew from the Committee and rechecked by a different team for accuracy. Final scores are determined and recorded next to each applicant's individual number.