Art & Perception

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!

It appears I’ll be making good on my recent threat to re-activate my dormant Sourdough Trail project. But never fear, I do not intend to flood A&P with posts on that topic. In fact, because, through A&P, I’ve realized how blogs can be useful, I’ve decided to create a new one specifically focused on my project. I’m in no way attempting to create a popular or active site; I simply think the blog structure is appropriate to the nature of what I’m doing, namely a variation on the psychogeography project discussed here a few months ago (and which I still hope to carry out this year). This one has similar concerns, but will be in a familiar rather than a new setting, and will be over a longer time scale, months rather than days. In essence, I want to observe how my sense of that particular place evolves and how it relates to the photography I do there. But if you want to know more, visit Along Sourdough Trail.

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Art blogging has gotten a lot of attention recently. Please chime in with your perspectives, comments, gripes, etc.

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.

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Art blogging has gotten a lot of attention recently. Last week Kriston Capps and Ed Winkleman suggested interest in an on-blog survey of responses to questions posed in a recent discussion, published in Art in America. So here’s my go at it. Anyone else, please chime in with your perspectives, comments, gripes, etc. What are we doing here, anyway?

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A blog like Art & Perception is, in some ways, a substitute for the local café. The ability to discuss art with people around the world compensates, at least in part, for the loss of the immediacy of face-to-face contact. But it’s not a complete substitute. Direct interaction is still important for many reasons, and consequently there is a need for ways to facilitate it by letting people know about opportunities to meet each other, to learn, and to see art.

Few of us are so plugged in to our local art scene that we are aware of everything that’s going on in terms of shows, openings, talks, social events, etc. The newspaper may list major events, typically those for which an ardent volunteer or a motivated gallery has written a press release. In the case of my hometown of Bozeman, Montana, there are several places on the web that have listings, but judging from what is there, I suspect they are little known or used. Most of what is happening is invisible to the public. Sometimes that’s desired, though certainly not always.

But more important than the events themselves is the community that could potentially form around them. The past quickly slips into oblivion, and there is no convenient forum for the remembering, discussing, reviewing, proposing that might be engendered.

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Here’s a curious tale for you: A week ago I was approached by someone interested in art collecting and in art blogging, and particularly in the interaction of the two. The C, as I shall call this beginning collector, put forward the interesting speculation that blogged artworks acquire “an aura of fame” that potentially makes them more salable. Whether that’s true or not, it probably doesn’t hurt the value of an artwork for it to be blogged.

It happens that A&P had come to the C’s attention, and as a way of getting hirs feet wet, the C is considering buying perhaps half a dozen prints of images that have appeared in my posts. My prints are cheap; I’m sure I wouldn’t be writing this post if your paintings, linoleums, quilts, etc. were the same! (But maybe they’ll be next.) The C had good timing, in that just a few days ago I met with a local gallery owner who was enthusiastic about showing my work in her gallery. If that works out, my prices will have to go up, at least for work being sold by the gallery. (Also, the C didn’t know it, but I currently give an unadvertised 20% discount on purchases after the first.)

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Art and Perception is being visited by more and more people, presumably looking for thought-provoking conversations about art. Many of them come back for more(!), so by that measure we’re creating interesting content. And when I say we, I’m counting commenters as well as post contributors. The comments are, in fact, the life-blood of the site, in my opinion.

So it may be time to think about ways to make more of the most interesting content more easily accessible to everyone. That would require some change to the site, so everyone’s input is needed, including any readers who haven’t posted or even commented before. We do have a category system, which could use some work to improve its visibility and usefulness. But that seems to work better for narrow topic areas, whereas people coming to the site may be more interested in some diversity and serendipity potential within broad topic areas. Think of a well-honed medium like newspapers with sections for main news, local news, sports, classifieds, etc.

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