You may notice a few differences in the appearance of the Art and Perception web pages. For the most part, the changes should be minor, but please comment here if there’s anything amiss or that you’d like to see altered, and especially if there are display problems. We are now running on the latest version of WordPress, version 2.6.1. This has improved features for authors (including easy adding of video and audio content), as well as better security and maintainability. But the upgrades to the core software and to the theme (Basic2Col) that the A&P theme is based on mean that some things will remain different, even as I continue to tweak towards our standard look and feel.

Feel free to ask any questions you may have about creating posts. Hopefully the new Write Post console will make sense with a little experimentation. I recommend enlarging your set of functional icons to two rows by clicking on the rightmost “Show kitchen sink,” and availing yourselves of the new Preview button. I also recommend limiting images to 450 pixels in width, though it appears larger ones will not break the display as in the past. However, depending on the browser, oversize images may look distorted in some way, as well as taking longer to load. If you save a post to come back to later, you’ll find it in the Drafts section of the Posts console.

We have collectively written nearly 600 posts and over 9,000 comments in about two years of operation. Carry on!

Looking back through the years, I do not remember when I started painting with oils and watercolors… maybe I was about 13. To be honest mostly of I know today has come from my own experiences of try and error.

To me, making a painting was never an issue but something that happens naturally with whatever materials come to my hands. Oils are my favorites, but recently I’ve been painting in a very quick method and found out that a mixture of acrylics, oils, glitter and others mediums work better for my new style.

In the past 3 years I decided to do a Fine Art degree as a nice “add on” to my previous qualifications. To my disappointment, I have learn nothing new but of a chaotic, hypocrite and delusional world from the Art teachers.

If you an artist with already some success and experience I recommend you to aim higher and not to go back to an educational institution. You see, despite your good intentions you setting yourself back and giving your own murder sentence to the chances of being ‘stepped on’ and muffled by the tutors, who also called themselves artists. You must have no previous artistic experience because no matter how you try to please and befriend this so called “artist teachers” you will always be seen as a threat rather than a student.

Unfortunately we live in a world that demands all this qualifications to be taken seriously. I have learned from my own mistakes, maybe because I was a bit naïve, full of dreams and hopes that a new qualification would push my career further, but realize that I brought this to myself to the point I had nothing but verbal abuse, bullying, harassment, intimidation and discrimination from lecturers. In the end I felt from as high I dreamed and have gain nothing but a new pretty BA words in my cv and an awful demoralizing experience I must rather forget!

More new painting in my redesigned website www.magicpaintings.com

Part of my motivation was to learn about blog design by working with my own WordPress site. That’s been fun so far, and I may not be done yet. But I think it’s stable enough to present in public, and I welcome any comments you might have.

But my main question is whether you know of good examples of blogs devoted to specific projects. I enjoy reading quite a few blogs–must post on that sometime–but none have such a degree of focus. One can, in principle, achieve a similar effect by creating a blog category for the project and choosing to view only posts in that category, but that still doesn’t allow the freedom of a separate design for the project. True, such personal project blogs may often be password restricted or unlinked to, so there might be many I’d be interested in if I knew of them.

I’ll spare you the technical details, though I’m more than happy to go into anything there’s interest in. Here I’ll just illustrate a couple of features of the current version. The following screenshots show that, for a given browser window, other elements don’t move around when switching among images of different aspect ratio, or to the text associated with the given project. They also shouldn’t move when switching projects or to an image with a caption (currently only Sourdough Trail images).

The next screenshot (at the same scale as the others) shows the re-positioning that takes place when the browser window is reduced in size. I want the site to work with small windows, but be able to open up and breathe a bit when the window is larger.

I’m still working on a number of details, plus getting ready to update existing projects and add new ones on Cottonwoods and Gallatin Valley (my local landscape). Meanwhile, I’d appreciate any comments you might have on the new site. I’d like to hear about even the tiniest, niggling frustration or dislike! There are several things that I suspect might come up, but I’d prefer not to direct your attention to anything particular, and see what strikes you. In general, what features do you like in an artist’s web site? Any favorite examples?

I assume most of you have heard about the WGA (Writers Guild of America) strike. I’m not sure how much attention it gets in other parts of the country (or the world, for that matter), but here in Los Angeles it’s a big story. This is after all an entertainment industry town, and the effects of the strike can be felt in every part of our local economy. My wife is a writer and a WGA member, as are many of our friends.

The strike has come about because of a disagreement between the corporations who own the movie and tv studios and the writers who create their content over how much, if at all, the writers should be compensated for their creative work. The writers contend that they should be getting a slightly larger share from the sale of DVDs of the movies they wrote. From the sale of a $28.95 DVD, the writer of the movie currently gets 4 cents, or as comedian Tim Kazurinsky points out, that ‘s 4 cents out of 2,895 cents. The writers are asking for 8 cents.

But a bigger issue, and possibly the main one, is that the networks and studios want to pay the writers nothing, that’s ZERO $, for tv shows and movies that they (the corporations) post on their web sites. The corporations claim that these streaming videos are “promotional”, and that they shouldn’t have to compensate the writers for posting them. But these “promotional” shows have commercials, just like any regular tv show, and are a huge source of income for the studios. They just want to keep it all for themselves.

As Mark Harris notes in his Entertainment Weekly Online column, “Why the Striking Writers Are Right”:

“The problem with this position is that writers deserve a share of revenue for material they help to create. Not a share only if the revenue is really, really a lot. A share, period. If it turns out that streaming video is a goldmine, then both sides will get a lot of money. If it turns out not to be, they’ll get less. Corporations are fond of reminding their employees that they’re all a ”family” during tough times. But when families sit down to dinner, Dad doesn’t get to say, ”I’m gonna eat until I decide I’m full, and then we’ll see if there’s anything left for the rest of you.” The right of a writer to earn money from work that continues to generate revenue cannot be dependent on how comfy studio and network heads are with the fullness of their own coffers.”

The studios are responding to the strike by showing reruns, and more reality and talk shows. But many of the more popular talk shows themselves will have to be reruns, since people like David Letterman and Jay Leno don’t come up with all those clever lines off the tops of their heads. They are created by a staff of, you guessed it, writers. To their credit, both Leno and Letterman are supporting the writers’ position in this dispute.

For the personal reasons mentioned above, and also on principle, as an artist, I’m siding with the writers as well. It seems obvious to me that the people who profit from the success of a creative product should include the artists who actually created it, not just the executives who made the phone calls and brokered the deals. I don’t watch a whole lot of tv to begin with, but until this strike is over I’m not planning on watching any. I’m going to vote with my remote, and say no to corporate greed. I hope many other people do the same.

==============

Here are a couple of videos about the strike that you might find interesting:
Tim Kazurinsky on WGN
the writers of The Office

Here, I am comparing some of Steve’s responses yesterday here on A&P to Arthur’s responses on ‘Thinking eye’.

My summary (hopefully, lacking misinterpretation) may serves as an illustration of the different virtues of (1) a team blog and (2) a blog of one individual.

What’s the purpose of your blog?
(1) Enhancing my understanding of art and evolving my own art through interactions with others.
(2) Personal diary.

What are the boundaries of your blog?
(1) None specified. Issues arising are resolved my majority vote.
(2) Personal Diary.

Why can’t blogs go further, to the point where there’s hardly any discernible difference between artist and critic/commentator, blog and work of art?
(1) I don’t see anything preventing it.
(2) I find the differences useful.

What scope and degree of editorial control do you exercise over your blog?
(1) Every team member has full control over her/his own post. Guest posts are encouraged. (My addition: Anyone displaying a discerning interest in the evolving theme of the blog can expect an invitation to join).
(2) Full control over the entire blog.

What about posting comments from readers, and what about anonymity?
(1) All comments are welcomed, and anonymous comments allowed.
(2) I would welcome it. Anonymity is acceptable.

What’s “trolling,” and why don’t some of you allow it?

Wikipedia:
# Troll (Internet), a person who is deliberately inflammatory on the Internet in order to provoke a vehement response from other users.

(1) Not a problem here, so we haven’t bothered to define it.
(2) It hasn’t been a problem for me, since I get very few comments anyway.

Is trolling really so easily identified and universally bad? Is having posters register a solution?
(1) Judging trolls is not so easy; mistaken labeling occurred here once and was rectified. Registration inhibits.
(2) Yes to the first two questions and a probable no to the third one. I

What about liability coverage?
(1) Answer: a joke on Jay
(2) no

What’s the economic model of your blog?
(1) We have no aversion to earning money, but neither have we made any attempt.
(2) It costs me basically no money and I make none in return.

How do you see your blog’s relation to the established print art media?
(1) We sometimes follow up on stories appearing elsewhere if it piques our fancy.
(2) There is a marked conflict between my original and enduring impulse to write as an amateur and my newfound sense that I should be respectable and write as a representative of an organization.

How do you attract readers/posters other than by word of mouth?
(1) We were Google-ranked #2 for “NeoIntegrity manifesto,” the post being a commentary following a NY Times article about the show (now we’re at #4).
(2) Posting smart comments to other people’s blogs is a typical way of getting attention.

In general, is blog art criticism more open and liberal, and print criticism more closed and conservative?
(1) Neither, but it is more diverse — though not always on our blog.
(2) There is a wider range of positions and writing styles online than in print. This isn’t necessarily a good thing; it takes some work filtering the relevant from the irrelevant.

Some people say that there’s a dearth of art criticism at length on blogs. Is this true? If so, does it have more to do with reading on a computer in general, or with art criticism in particular?
(1) True for our blog. It has almost entirely to do with access to artworks and writing time available.
(2) It appears to be true, although there are no doubt exceptions out there.

Do blogs help correct the geographical bias in print art criticism, i.e., the tendency to think that most of the important stuff happens in New York or Los Angeles, and the difficulty of art outside those places to get national attention?
(1) Geography does not seem too relevant.
(2) If you have never seen an artist’s work it person, that limits the relevance of writing on that work.

One index of a city’s gravity as an art center is young artists—perhaps recent MFAs—from elsewhere coming to set up shop. Is that happening in Philadelphia and Portland?
(1) It’s happening in Bozeman, …
(2) In Ithaca? No, not it any significant numbers, although I do know some people.

Is there any constructively negative edge to your blogging and, if so, what is it?
(1) Among ourselves, negative comments are not to common, though welcomed by some, at least. Some outside artists we have discussed (positively and negatively) have responded on the blog.
(2) Not as much as I’d like.

Let’s throw something back into the mix: naked human ambition. Unknown bloggers want to be little bloggers; little bloggers want to be bigger bloggers; and bigger bloggers want to be called, as is Tyler’s Modern Art Notes, “the most influential of all the visual-arts blogs” by the Wall Street Journal.
(1) We’re not striving for influence, but larger membership and participation might be nice.
(2) Yes, of course. Vanity does play a major role, especially since most of us are doing this for free

Where will your blog be in three to five years?
(1) I’m amazed at any blog that lasts so long. We’re about one year old, in our current form, and I have no idea whether the blog will exist in two more.
(2) If I’m still doing it—which I’d like to be—I imagine that it would still have the same basic character. I hope for change in terms of numbers: more frequent posting, longer posts, more readers and more comments.

1. What’s the purpose of your blog?
I think of it as a replacement for the local cafe, a place where there are mostly regulars, but also any interested newcomers, and the order of the day is discussion of art topics. Since we propose these ourselves, they typically come out of some issue we’re grappling with, whether in our own art-making, or in our understanding of other artists, the workings of the art world, etc. Speaking for myself, I think I’ve learned a lot about my own photography and about art in general.

2. What are the boundaries of your blog?
There are none specified. Any problems arising, major proposals, or applications for membership are voted on by the group. Comments are wide open, though we do delete irrelevant spam.

3. Tyler has cited Joy Garnett’s NewsGrist blog as doing a great job of “placing art within a sociocultural and political context.” What I see on NewsGrist is a magazinelike interspersing of short profiles, exhibition reviews, op-ed pieces on how other people are covering things, and Village Voice–like political takes. But what does Tyler’s comment mean to you, and why are blogs in general better positioned than print to do what he describes?
“Placing art within a sociocultural and political context” means, for us, placing it in the context of our conversation — what we’ve discussed before, or what we assume we know in common. We don’t claim that this is or should be anyone else’s context. Print media can go part way, but they are not necessarily addressing our concerns, and they are not conversations.

4. Why can’t blogs go further, to the point where there’s hardly any discernible difference between artist and critic/commentator, blog and work of art?
I don’t see anything preventing it, if that’s the kind of art the artist/critic/commentator wants to make.

5. What scope and degree of editorial control do you exercise over your blog?
It’s a group blog. Control is full over my own posts, none over other members’. If someone wants to do a guest post through me, I may offer suggestions, and retain the right of refusal. A guest can post via any member.

6. What about posting comments from readers, and what about anonymity?
All comments are welcomed, and anonymous comments allowed.

7. What’s “trolling,” and why don’t some of you allow it?
Not a problem here, so we haven’t bothered to define it.

8. Is trolling really so easily identified and universally bad? Is having posters register a solution?
Judging trolls is not so easy; mistaken labeling occurred here once and was rectified. Registration inhibits.

9. What about liability coverage?
Referring to Jay’s ladders?

10. What’s the economic model of your blog?
None. There’s been talk of having an associated gallery for members’ art, but it’s never caught on. The blog may deliver some attention for participants, but that’s about it. We have no aversion to earning money, but neither have we made any attempt.

11. How do you see your blog’s relation to the established print art media?
We sometimes follow up on stories appearing elsewhere if it piques our fancy. It doesn’t seem to have gone the other direction yet.

12. Tyler and Regina, what’s the relationship between your blogging and your work in the print media?
Doesn’t apply.

13. How do you attract readers/posters other than by word of mouth?
We are linked to from other blogs, and we also turn up in search results. To cite a fairly recent example, we were Google-ranked #2 for “NeoIntegrity manifesto,” the post being a commentary following a NY Times article about the show (now we’re at #4).

14. In general, is blog art criticism more open and liberal, and print criticism more closed and conservative?
Neither, but it is more diverse — though not always on our blog.

15. Some people say that there’s a dearth of art criticism at length on blogs. Is this true? If so, does it have more to do with reading on a computer in general, or with art criticism in particular?
True for our blog. It has almost entirely to do with access to artworks and writing time available.

16. Art magazines come out once a month. Newspaper art reviews usually appear once a week. Blogs appear more or less daily, and sometimes have updates by the hour. Do you think that the faster pace of blogs will start to affect the pace of art-making?
Not significantly.

17. Tyler just said that there’s more good art being made by more artists in more places than at any time in history. Is this true? And if so, what’s the reason?
It’s what one would expect with the number of artists up, and barriers (e.g. availability of information and materials) down.

18. Do blogs help correct the geographical bias in print art criticism, i.e., the tendency to think that most of the important stuff happens in New York or Los Angeles, and the difficulty of art outside those places to get national attention?
Most of us live in the US, including New York and Los Angeles, but geography does not seem too relevant.

19. One index of a city’s gravity as an art center is young artists—perhaps recent MFAs—from elsewhere coming to set up shop. Is that happening in Philadelphia and Portland?
It’s happening in Bozeman, …

20. Is there any constructively negative edge to your blogging and, if so, what is it?
It may be constructive for the participants, in that negative comments can potentially further our understanding of the art as much as positive ones can. Only those on the receiving end can judge whether it’s useful to them. Among ourselves, negative comments are not to common, though welcomed by some, at least. Some outside artists we have discussed (positively and negatively) have responded on the blog.

21. Let’s throw something back into the mix: naked human ambition. Unknown bloggers want to be little bloggers; little bloggers want to be bigger bloggers; and bigger bloggers want to be called, as is Tyler’s Modern Art Notes, “the most influential of all the visual-arts blogs” by the Wall Street Journal.
We’re not striving for influence, but larger membership and participation might be nice…

22. Where will your blog be in three to five years?
I’m amazed at any blog that lasts so long. We’re about one year old, in our current form, and I have no idea whether the blog will exist in two more.