Visual art news,
views & reviews in Dallas, Texas, USA
Home Index Calendar Member art Join Resources Feedback Contact us Reviews Submissions Search
Submission Guidelines
How to Send Us Stuff
Visual art news,
views & reviews in Dallas, Texas, USA
Home Index Calendar Member art Join Resources Feedback Contact us Reviews Submissions Search
Submission Guidelines
How to Send Us Stuff
HOW TO SEND US : Email Calendar Info Text Images Stories Calendar Information Attachments E-vites (don't) Personal Invitations Image Identification Format
Call For Entries or Art Opportunities (competitive shows, jobs, etc.) Snail-Mailed Text Postcard Invitations Gallery Info Schools or Classes Web Addresses (URLs) Slides Digital Images Non-Digital Prints Burn Your Own CDs or DVDs
PROCEDURES : Submission Rules That Apply to Everybody Calendar Procedures
Feedback Procedures Jobs at DARts (ha!) How to paste text into email
Emailed calendar information is listed first. Postcards second. Stuff you hand the editor at an opening is generally lost forever in a pocket somewhere.
Send info in this order, in 1 paragraph, in the text of an email:
Show title, names of all artists in paragraph form separated by commas, gallery name, opening times, date, month, through closing month date.
Use the following example for your submission:
Channeling Other Worlds - Valton Tyler at Valley House, opening 6-8:30, Friday, January 22 through February 20
DO NOT USE ALL CAPS. No abbreviations or punctuation.
Include the space's address only if is new to DallasArtsRevue and not already listed on our Gallery Information page.
Attach up to a 5 x 7-inch JPEG of art that is in your show and include this caption information in the text of the email in this exact order:
Artist Title year medium size
This is an example of an image caption:
Glenn Barr Idyll 2009 acrylic on board 42 x 16 inches
Name the jpeg file with your name and the title (or a short version of the title), but do not include any punctuation or any spacebar spaces in the image file name.
Send all information in the text of an email to jcompton@tx.rr.com.
Thanks,
J R Compton
Editor/Publisher
Submission
"The Easy Way" just above, first.
Anyone may submit calendar information. Anyone.
Emailed information is used much more quickly than snail mail posted info — especially if there's more than six or seven artists listed. The one nice thing about postcards, I can scan the picture. If you put words into an attached JPEG, I won't be able to separate them out. I hate retyping.
The info we really need and the order it will be put in is:
Show Title at art space with Artists' Names, time, Month & date of reception, through month and date
No matter how you submit your information, that's the form it will be published in.
The closer your data is to this order, the quicker it will get into the DallasArtsRevue calendar.
Please do not submit information in colors — any colors. Plain text is better than HTML.
Don't abbreviate anything. We spell everything out. Months, streets, avenues, whatever.
Send your show publicity in a timely manner. If the show's tomorrow, it's already too late.
If it is a one- or two-day only event, state so clearly.
Do Not Attach Word documents or PDFs. Put info in the text of an email.
Do not list the info down the page. Do not number them or use categories to mark the info. Just give me the info.
More submissions are rejected because they do not include a list of artists or the closing date than any other reasons.
This is DallasArtsRevue.
Unless a Dallas artist is showing or doing somethng else interesting there, I am much less interested in art outside of Dallas. This includes Lewisville, Irving, Arlington, New York City, Ho Chi Minh City and other locations.
I still list Fort Worth and Denton and some other sub burgs, but I rarely go there to look at art, and I can easily forsee a time when I will ignore those places. I don't want DallasArtsRevue to expand. I want it to contract.
DO NOT label or separate categories, like
title:
artists:
location:I just have to edit all that crap out. Put it in paragraph form.
Do NOT label artists, like
Ferdinand Tantos, painter – refugee artist from Thailand, now lives in Dallas, TX.
List the artists' names in paragraph form separated by commas
Jim Smith, Tom McGillicutty, John Mix, Dale Patrick, Mary Ann Who, John and Mary Compton, Emily Bryan, Harold Clare, Johnny Weissmueller, Lash Larue, Missy Milktoast and Horace Fullerbrighter
Adding info I don't need and won't use just means more work to edit it out. I procrastinate work. Easy goes fast.
State it in sentence form. Then stop. I don't need hype. Probably nobody does. It is very unlikely anyone anywhere will ever use your hype, although when you send this stuff to individuals, it may help them decide whether to attend.
Do Not List these categories, just put info in this order
1. Show title(s)
DARts edits or ignores titles like “Recent Work.” If your show's title is interesting, we'll use it. Show titles are bolded, so it grabs attention. If your show doesn't have a title, we won't bold anything.
2. Artist(s)' name(s)
DARts will not list events without names of all Dallas artists in the show. (Yes, all. We've listed as many as 200 names before and will again — as long as I don't have to type them. We have plenty of space.)
List all artists' names in paragraph form with a comma (,) then a space after each name. Please type them in Title Case, not ALL CAPs or all lower case, please.
3. Location
gallery, room, building, etc. name, address, city, state, country — if not Dallas. There's a page for maps, so if your art space is difficult to find, send us a map.
DARts won't list addresses in a tour, but we'll link the tour web site in the calendar. For tours, we'll choose among better-known locations where people can pick up maps prior to the event.
We still want the names of all the artists on the tour. No artist names, no listing.
The first time we list your art space, we'll cite the address. After that, make sure you read and heed the submission info on the Arts Space Information Page.
Precise number addresses for galleries, lectures, etc. are helpful for those who use online mapping services.
Cross streets are often helpful.
2038 South Chautauqua at Altus Boulevard
Some people use Mapscos, so those numbers can be helpful.
Mapsco 37H
Remember that MapQuest and Google online mapping utilities get it wrong sometimes. Check them out before you depend on those squirrels.
4. Gallery or exhibition space
5. Opening times and date
The correct format for expressing time/date in DallasArtsRevue is
7-9 Friday September 23. (We use pink type to indicate time.)
If you state the day of the week, we'll use it, and readers will be able to remember the day for your event better, but we won't add it for you.
We generally assume AM and PM are obvious. When they aren't, we might use them in lower case.
11 pm - 3 am
We differenciate 12 am and 12 pm by calling them midnight and noon.
DallasArtsRevue Calendar Events are arranged by closing dates.
Without the closing date, we cannot list your show.
DARts' email address is always on the Contact Us page.
Information pasted from Microsnot Word documents look funny in email. Curly quotes turn into question marks or asterisks (*) and dashes look goofy.
Please use or paste plain text in emails.
Save your document as .txt or .rtf, then paste it into an email.
Keep it short.
Put all information in the body of an email.
if you don't know how to do that, read How to paste text into emails. It's easy.
Do not attach MicroSnot Word documents.
Do not attach PDFs or text documents or anything else.
Just send us the info in the email.
Put all the info I need in the text of one email. Then stop.Do not send images of words, because I can't cut and paste text from them. I hate retyping, and I'm not very good at it.
I can type up to five names, after that I need text to copy and paste.
"Informative" JPEGs are not helpful. If I can't copy and paste text information, your event might get left out.
Spell out all words — including months, Streets, Boulevards and everything else. Don't use " for inches, ever.
Use intelligent email subjects.
Give meaningful names to image files.
Do not email images AND send postcards. It's confusing.
If I see two or more emails from you, I'll assume they are spam and throw them all away.
If you ignore these instructions, I will ignore you.
Do not send me reminders. They confuse me.
Do not type in all capital letters. I just have to retype it, and I procrastinate doing that.
Do not send elaborate Press Releases. All I need is the facts. More than that is hype.
Hype is hype, and after the important info noted above, I don't need it.
If you need to communicate with me, email me and explain your issue.
Do not double or triple or quadruple-space calendar notices.
It makes it harder and takes longer for me
to put all the right information together.
When you make it harder for me to do my job,
I take longer to post your notices.
The DallasArtsRevue calendar is free.
If the editor gets snippy, you're probably ignoring my guidelines.
Make it easy, and I'll run your listing quickly and efficiently.
Only especially talented writers' prose ever makes it to the DARts Calendar.
Include all the info in the text of one email.
Personal Invitations
If what you are sending me is actually a personal invitation, please state that clearly, and I will not pester you for calendar information.
I also probably will not attend unless we are good friends.
Do not use generic email subjects
“Art” or “Art News” is nothing new here.
“Press Release” is not specific enough.
If you can't think of anything else, use the artist & gallery name.
I.e., “J R Compton at The White Rock Lake Museum in the Bath House Culture Center January through mid-April 2008” makes sense and lets me know immediately what your email is about.
Get to the point quickly.
The farther down an email or printed page I have to go to find information, the less likely I will.
If I have to click several pages down to find mention of your event, I won't.
If you are promoting several kinds of events — only some of which are visual art events, send me a separate email.
Who, what, when, why and where are usually sufficient.
I ignore purple prose, especially words like “world renowned” — If an artist really is, you won't have to say it, and if you have to say it, they aren't.
Describe work in a show simply, preferably by media, but realize I will probably ignore it.
Photographs by Ernie & Bert. Sculpture by Art Shirer. Performance Art by Annie Boddy. Don't give me their life histories.
I won't include your champagne tasting, special vodka drinkathon or any other alcoholic reception accoutrements. Information about the food, drinks, music or sponsors of your opening will not be published.
Information about the art, artists, art lovers or art professionals or others who speak, lecture or show slides or their work will be published.
Be Timely: Send show information 2 weeks before the event.
If you wait till the last minute to send me information, I might well not get around to adding your information until after your opening.
Don't send a list of future events.
I'll just use the most current one and trash the rest. I am not well organized enough to keep track of your future events. Send them 2 to 5 weeks to ahead of time, please.
Give meaningful names to images
Image 001 (from Gerald Peters)
This lovely image came to me as Image 001 — no indication of who the artist was, what gallery or whatever it came from or why. I only found that out much later, then I was surprised.
Just image 001, like it was their first digital image. I might have used it, if I knew what it was or where it came from. It's pretty. It shows well at low resolution. It's bold and graphic with lots of fine details.
I get dozens of these every month.
Name images by artist and gallery name.
The format for identification of images
is as follows and never varies, except when I can't get all the information:
Richard
Ray Cycling at White Rock Lake, 2007
oil on canvas 24 x 30 inches
Captions are ALWAYS typed in this sequence:
Artist Name Title, year date
media size in inches (always expressed as height x width x depth) inches or feet.
There's three space-bar spaces between the bold items (but those spaces are lost in the transitions to and from email)No inch (") marks, ever!
If you are a DallasArtsRevue member, I will link your name to your member page almost every time I see it.
If you are not a member, you should join.
Gallery Information
New (to us) galleries or art spaces should send additional information, to be included on our Art Space Information (for galleries) or Museums & Art Centers pages. Do not include the bullets, they're here so you'll pay attention to the info behind them.
- Art space name
- address, including street address and zip code,
- phone number for information
- web site address (URL) and email address(es)
- open days and times
- contact person
If you send an image attached to an email, chances are better I'll use it, but I don't use many. I am picky. I go for pretty, unusual, work by students, stuff I like.
Do not attach images to email then send a postcard with the same information.
Just send the email.
I review work that thrills or chills me, pisses me off or otherwise makes me want to write about it.
I don't write reviews on requests or command. The last time I (we) reviewed work the artist requested we review, I never heard from the artist again.Getting a review here does not automatically mean you will like the review here.
The time before that, the artist hated what I said and wanted me to retract it. I didn't. It's too much work.
Now that Anna Palmer does the Calendar, and does it well, forget anything I say about what a chore it is/was. Not anymore:
The Gallery/Art Space Information Page was never at the top of my list of things to do, and galleries were not always added in a timely manner. I usually add new ones when I get calendar information from them, and I think my readers will want to know more about that gallery.
Calendar Event Submission Procedures are below.
DARts seeks news about Dallas artists, out of town and out of state. But keep it simple. All we need is who, what, when and where. Purple prose is ignored, and check out the rules for all other submissions, before you send stuff.
DallasArtsRevue's Postal Address
Send invitations, flyers, PR (I often scan printed images for illustrations on the calendar page), postcard invitations, brochures or publicity notices to:
DARts
914 Grandview Av
Dallas TX 75223Make checks payable to J R Compton, not anything else
Do not send slides.
Do not send me E-vites!
If you are inviting me personally, send me an email. Make it clear you are inviting me personally and not wanting to get listed on the calendar.
Feedback
If you send feedback, be sure to notify me if you do not want it published.
I assume everything is for sharing.
If you sign your name, I'll use it.
If you sign it “anonymous,” so will I.
DARts loves feedback — positive or negative, good, bad or ugly, and we especially like to print the really vicious ones, although we don't publish everything.
Your opinion is more important than who sent it.
See the DARts Feedback page for examples.
If you send negative feedback, don't get mad at me for publishiing your letter word for word.
The privacy of emails is not protected by law like those sent via the U.S. Mail is. Many people can read your "private" emails.
If you're pleasant, I'll correct your grammar and spelling errors. If you're a creep, I'll point out your errors with a [sic] at every opportunity. Spell check.
Full infomation about submitting those are on the Artists Opportunities page itself.
Schools and public and private classes
Rare or one-time-only classes may be submitted to the Calendar. Submit only the title, teacher, times, dates, location and a link to a full description online.
DARts Schools & Classes page lists public and private schools and teachers. It's a resource list, not udated often enough to list specific classes and dates. But we will list schools and all kinds of contact data.
And we're happy to list private teachers, including the types of classes they teach.
We recommend everyone include geographic addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and a web site (that way, you can update specific class lists, and we don't have to).
Check out the page and see how others are listed, and check out the rules for all other submissions, before you send stuff.
(I know I've railed against attachments for years. Now that I can finally quickly and easily download them, I appreciate them and might even use yours.)
Do not send images inside a word processing document.
Do not send words inside an image document, like a JPEG.
Name them with your first and last or gallery name or better yet, that piece's title.
Name images with your name or don't send them.
Send them as .jpg or .jpeg documents. I hate PDFs, because they're a pain to deal with. Please just send the JPEGs, don't stick them in a PDF.
Snail Mail
The best way to send us pictures is to mail picture postcards or other printed matter via the U.S. Mail to the address above.
You can also send color prints or snapshots in a self-addressed stamped envelope (SASE), so I can post them back to you after I digitize them.
No SASE, no return.
Probably no return, no matter what, unless you are very very lucky or I've just cleaned my office, an annual proposition.
Postcards, Brochures, Etc.
Images printed with ink on paper from a printing press (postcards, brochures or magazines) are great. I deal with them every day.
Images printed on your cheap computer printer are probably not good enough.
Send me a copy of your original image file, instead.
Either black & white or color is okay, but color is more fun, more descriptive and just as cheap on the internet.
I'm much more likely to use color images.
Slides
Do not send slides. They're expensive, and I don't deal well with them.
Burning Your Own CDs or DVDs
If you can burn your own, the best format for sending images is digitalized as JPEGs or PSD (Photoshop Documents) on a CD-ROM or DVD.
If you don't know what you are doing, don't do it.
Burn your images as files from 2 to 20 megabytes in size.
Put slides or CDs of digital images in a stamped, self-addressed envelope — if you want them back.
Label your CD by writing on it with a felt tip marker.
Name your CD or DVD file before you burn it, so when it shows up on my computer desktop, I can see what it is.
I already have lots of unlabeled CDs floating around. Without a label, yours will get lost.
Digital Images
File size should be at least 400k. A couple megabytes would be fabulous.
Smaller than that won't give me the quality I need.Make the name meaningful — use your name and/or the title of the piece or the show or whatever you're promoting.
Tell me who sent it or name it after the event itself.
When I'm finished with your original, I delete it. I don't need to store it.
Non-digital Prints
If you are not set up for digital photography, you should be.
If you know what you're doing
and you want to digitally scan a slide:
Full image 35mm slides should be scanned at 800 pixels per inch
Use JPEG format for continuous tone images or photographs
PSD (uncompressed Photoshop document) format is appreciated when files are burned on CDs or DVDs.
Do not ever send PSD files as attachments to emails. It won't work.
See Burning Your Own CDs or DVDs above.
Avoid using GIF format for tonal images.
TIF(F)s are a nuissance, but I can use them.
BMPs are useless.
Don't send GIFs or JPEGs of text.
Send text in the text of an email, not as attachments.
I read every email I get except obvious spam. Sometimes I even read those, but Macintosh's Mail client has a spectacular spam deleter.
Don't send me PDFs (Adobe's Portable Document Format). It just wastes space and makes your images difficult to deal with.
URLs
Artists With Web Pages and other DARts pages list and link websites.
Your site or page may be listed on Artists with Web Pages by sending us your name, city address and URL.
Submit URLs (web addresses) in the
http://www.your-address.com format
Tell me what city you live in.
If your site or page does not load or major portions of it do not load or load painfully slowly, or
There's no images of your work on the top level, I'll either complain, won't list it, or browse till I find where your art actually is, then use that URL instead.
I don't mind recharacterizing your site if you fix it (but I don't make demands).
If your link on DallasArtsRevue needs updating, tell me on what page your link is.
Don't just say your link is on my site. I have several sites, and there's more than a thousand pages on this one.
Tell me exactly where your URL is listed on which DARts page. I don't memorize every link.
I usually post the info first, then add the pictures later.
If you want to know if you're listed, read the calendar page. It's arranged chronologically. Find your end date, and if it's not there, let me know.
Handing me an invitation or flyer at an opening or a party is a particularly inefective way of getting your event listed. I lose or forget those things almost immediately.
When DARts errs, tell me. I love to get — and publish — intelligent feedback. And I'd prefer to present accurate information. But tell me the exact URL of the page with the error. With more than 1,200 web pages here, it is impossible to remember every mention.
We don't mind if you use a pen name or submit stuff anonymously, as long as you sign your message, so I know who wrote it.
We encourage pseudonyms for shy people and those who do not have the intentional fortitude to stand up with their own opinioons.
If you send me an angry letter, then get shy and want it retracted, I won't.
We won't type the word gallery on the Calendar page, so assume it's there. If your gallery name is long and involved, it will be edited.
If you can't find someone or some thing using the fast Google Search This Site utility, it probably isn't here.
My personal prejudice is toward 3-D art and anything from Dallas over everything else from anywhere other. But I have a lot of paintings, and I think I'm beginning to understand that medium. I've been a photographer since 1964, so I can pretty easily get my mind around those.
Other DARts writers have significantly different prejudices, which is why I keep them around.
How to send text in the body of an email
Create a new email to
Our latest email address is always on the Contact Us page.
Highlight
In your word processing program, select the text — words, paragraphs — by swiping through the text with the cursor, so the words turn black or some color.Copy
control c [PC] or command c [Mac] (c is for copy) the text.Don't worry about where it goes (It goes into a temporary storage area. Mac calls it the clipboard. I don't know what PC calls it.)
But don't copy anything else on top of it.
Click into your email to DARts.
Paste control v [PC] or command v [Mac] (Think of the v as a funnel.) into the email.
Do Not Attach Word Processing Documents to email.Include all the text I need to see in the text of the email.
THIS IS ART; THIS IS NOT ART by Gerald Burns
I do not give assignments. I let writers decide what they want to write about. I usually do not find out what that is until they submit their stories, although they sometimes tell me.
I probably should say I usually don't give assignments. If you need an assignment, I'll come up with something once I've seen and liked your writing style.
DallasArtsRevue does accept unsolicited manuscripts. If they're good, we even publish them.
We far prefer informal stories over stilted academic-style stories. We publish stories about creative human beings. We don't mind if you employ the Who - What - When - Why - and Where, journalistic style reverse pyramid to begin a story.
In fact, we don't have many writing rules.
I would be happy to pay a fair amount for good art criticism I can publish in DallasArtsRevue. That amount is negotiable.
I have written too many stories for $25 and much longer ones for $100 for other publications, so I'm talking about more than those measly amounts, so if you are interested, contact me.
My current email address is always near the top of the Contact Us page.
I can correct your grammar, even figure out what you are trying to say and say it for you, but I will not alter your opinions. I used to write for Art Papers, Chicago's New Art Examiner and Grass Fire, and they all changed my opinions so much I didn't recognize them. I hate that, and I won't do it.
Why I'd like your story better than mine is that your opinions are different. I get tired of mine, and I'd be happy to pay you for yours — more than any of those creeps ever paid me.
A list of our contributors is on the cover/home/index page, if you'd like to see them.
There are no deadlines. If you're writing about a show, it's nice if our readers have time to check out the art for themselves, but that's not always possible.
Send a sample
My best advice to anyone who wants to start writing for DallasArtsRevue is to find a single piece of art by a local artist that the writer likes or is inspired by, baffled by or finds reprehensivble, then write about it. It probably should be a recent work of art by a Dallas artist.
Describe it, so we can 'see' it even without the inevitable photograph. Tell us what's interesting about it, not why it's bad, although negatives should be explored. Let your descriptions speak your opinions, instead of just saying this or that is bad or good. The cartoon above is a joke.
If you write about one, single, recent piece of art, and the editor likes it, we can publish it, pay you, and get on with you writing more — about more than one piece or a show or a specific artist, or whatever.
DARts stories tend to involve personal interaction rather than being academic discourses. We have no use for what is often called "objectivity." There is no such thing as objectivity. DARts writers are subjective.
I have remarkably unpopular indexes of both my writings about objectivity and my periods of art ennui.
I want DARts to be positive and educational, not full of diatribe. And I prefer writers who can express themselves clearly and directly. I want to enjoy reading stories. I want writers to have opinions, but I want those opinions to be backed up by what else they say.
If I like your story, I'll probably go wherever the art is, and make some photographs to illustrate it.
If you don't know what you're talking about, I'll know. I've been publishing stories about art since 1965, much longer than anyone else in Dallas.
Dallas is the first word in DallasArtsRevue. Unless an outside artist is showing here in something peculiarly Dallas, I'm not interested.
Dallas Dallas Dallas.
DallasArtsRevue is about Dallas art and Dallas artists and Dallas institutions. Of course, we also publish stories about artists "around here." So I should probably say "Dallas area."
If you are angry about something, do something that calms you, figure out why you're angry, then write me something later.
Don't write about ART, write about art.
Write so anybody can tell what you're saying, even those of us without advanced degrees in art.
Caveats
Keep your writing real. If you don't know what you are talking about, don't talk about it.
First-time DARts writers should email me via the link on the Contact us page to tell me what they plan to write about before they write about it.
Before you start writing for DallasArtsRevue, send me a sample of your writing about art.
since November 5, 2005
