Visual art news, views & reviews in Dallas, Texas, USA

JR's Midnight Ramble

November 2004

Again a long, long time since the last Midnight Ramble, and I wonder whether I'll ever get around to writing another one after this. Although there's something to be said about starting over again, again.

Rollaway Tables at Rockwall

 

Just as well, I suppose that it's more the responsibility of writing another one of these fool things than the actually having anything planned to say part that impels me here to add word after word to this stack of those.

Physically, the big diff tween last July when I last wrote one of these and now is that the navigation bar is now along the left side, where book after book, article after story after everywhere-I-read-about-it says readers expect to find such things.

Those authors did not, however, say it needed to be as long as it is on some DARts pages. But you know me, once I get going, it's hard to stop.

 

The View Out the Back of Rockwall's Civic Center

 

I have noticed that people seem to be reading them now. I actually get fewer idiot publicity seekers ignoring Submission Guidelines on the Calendar page, just for one fer instance. Apparently, nobody ever saw the "How to Send Us Stuff" writ across the top of countless former pages.

Lately, quite a few people actually follow the guidelines and, as a direct result, get their publicity looked at and often published in the calendar. Must be something to all those experts' opinions that that's where that goes.

Wish I hadn't writ that. Now, of a sudden I'm getting weirdest possible PR, even a woman who wants me to use my "pull with the Dallas Morning News*... to get coverage of [her] show, [a] write up, a photographer at the show, post interview, etc."

* = Ha! Tom Sime utterly ignored my one-person show at the Bath House last April, so I have to fight off urges to delete his name from exhibition lists; and decades previous, their photography honcho called me "a communist."

Like that's gonna happen anyway in a city where even significant shows get ignored in the press — unless they're by BIg Time Art Guys from Out of Town (The BiTAGsFOOT Syndrome).

I admit I tend to let those nav bar thingies go on and on down the sides of new pages. And you probably should know that I don't get off Scott-free from the new way. Once those long yellow blocks go on a page, typing gets painfully slow till I get the type down past the bottom of it.

Next experiment is to shorten the suckers by about 70%. See? I get notions just writing about the old ones to you.

Ooof! What an improvement. This page has the first short one, now. Thanks.

So I sometimes leave them off till I'm done typing, then blomp them into place. Except for not being able to place wide pictures near the top of new pages anymore, I rather prefer the new way, and I was inordinately proud of the design for several weeks.

top

The Floor at Pan American Gallery

 

Thanks to the ever-alertness of one DARts Member, the link to the index of members' pages' is very near the top of every page. Still.

Since the D-Magazine notice, I've got a lot more listings in the calendar. Nice to be recognized and appreciated, especially when it seems to widen the readership base, if only by making more art events more easily findable on these pages.

 

Something else I'd worried about, then implemented at point-blank range, only to find out that it would actually work and work well, was jumping the Scherbarth Interview — by far the longest article ever written for this site — twice to two additional pages.

Both of which got nearly the same number of visitors. Meaning that a proportionately large number of readers actually read all three pages of it. (The hit numbers will be proportionately off now, because the first part has lately moved off the cover and into the site.

All along I'd read that that's the right way to handle any story, but I dint want readers to have to keep jumping page to page to page. But, if it's good enough writing and interesting enough people and subject, you/they will.

Nice to know that, although most articles here will be significantly shorter, another thing all those How To weber8 books I keep reading in bookstores are at least somewhat accurate about.

 

Maybe I should go back and read them some more, but I'm kinda busy lately figuring out the whys and wherefores of Macintosh OS (operating system) X, which, after the first week, is beginning to creep into my brain, although it baffles me completely most of the time. Still.

I'm usually an early adopter of updated operating systems. I've been a Macintosh Computer Tutor since 1985, and I've taught a lot of people how to work Mac's latest systems. This time I'm who needs the re-education, although clients I've warded off the new system will no-doubt follow.

top

Former DARts Member Anila Agha - Detail of unidentified piece

 

I couldn't find the book about it I wanted in Dallas, but I knew that Book People in Austin would have it, and they did. I apologized to the clerk when I bought Robin Williams (She's my fave Mac writer, not the funny guy.)'s Mac OS X Book, because it's obvious it had been used by a lot of people before I bought it. It was all dog-eared and crumpled. I told him he should sell it to me for a used book price.

Dallas didn't have the latest — Panther — version. But BP, of course, did. I never doubted them (and it's almost worth driving 200 miles just to visit supposedly "the largest bookstore in the world." I always stop there on the way down to the Rio Grande Valley, and I almost always get to Big A just at evening traffic jam, because my early mornings begin around noon.

 

I took the week off for Thanksgiving. It was my first week off DallasArtsRevue this year and for well more than a year before that. I took lots of photographs, but few of them approximated fine art. They were mostly just family.

No stories, no calendaring, no snooping for news, no scouring for new Art Opportunities, no art for more than a week.

What utter relief!

I did write a new Transition essay about writing about art and other things and uploaded a new series of photographs for the White Rock Lake Journal just before I left, so I wouldn't have to think about either, either.

I even cleaned my kitchen, vacuumed my rugs and mopped some floors, so the friend who came in to feed and gentle Yo (my 3 1/2-year-old svelt orange cat) wouldn't be totally offended during my absence, and I wouldn't have to face what I usually have to face when I come back from vacation.

Yo obviously missed me even more than I obviously missed him.

I got two, long audio books into my ears and brain, one the 500 miles down, and another the 500 miles up. Peace Like A River was eloquent, prosaic and a beautiful story often expressed in beautiful words. And Jackdaws was girl spies against Hitler high adventure.

top

My nephew, Firecracker Jackson Renard Compton (another J R),
the only boy child of his generation with our last name —
something about carrying on the family name. Like me at
that age, he wears thick glasses.

 

It was a joy being with all my brothers, some nieces, a few nephews, my father (who'll be 91 the day after Christmas) and my mother — almost the whole family. Way too many people for the beds available, but I got there early enough to sleep in a good one before all the couples arrived. And I stayed late enough to get one back after everybody else left.

Ah, sweet, artless peace — like a highway to forever. Automatic cruise control at 58 mph both ways, my mileage in my hot little Honda automatic hovering just above 30 mpg. Someday I'll drive all day at 45 to see how much that helps. Guess I'll have to get a Prius to get real mileage. Someday, someday ...

 

Of course, I took several hundred photographs of home, family and citrus. Even burned a CD of all the latest images for each bunch as they parted, struggled with my mother's computer, fixed some things, utterly failed at some others. Learned more about her digital camera, so I could update that, too.

Scoured my OS X book, struggled with that mightily, and read the remainder of one science fiction story. The rest of the time I talked and played games and watched TV and ate and ate and ate with my favorite people on the face of the planet.

My, how time flew. It was a gas.

 

Mom & Her Four Boys — J R, John, Mary, Dale and Tom Compton

 

It wasn't exactly Christmas Early, but I also came back with a whistling teapot that holds more than a quart and a half of water and a drum that resonates long and loud and deep that my parents banged on on one of their vacations into Mexico and had been hanging on the wall where I spent most of my Thanksgiving Family nights sleeping next to. And two drumsticks.

I love to suspend it from its string then bang on it for five or ten minutes, letting it spin slowly in the no breezes in my closed-off-for-winter house. Lovely resonance. Yum.

I've already — and I've only been back two days — added three new pages — including a story about the Rockwall National that scared me silly to write (although once I got going was pretty easy to do, although I was careful to let the show come down before I published it — Honor the Art), updated the calendar several times, posted several new ops on the Members-Only Artists' Opportunities (which amazes me every time I look at it) page twice and brought several sub-indexes upper to date.

top

Now I'm considering writing a story to weave around my favorites of the Barrett Collections photographs from the Meadows Museum and looking around for new possibilities.

Jim Dolan has agreed to co-interview Joan Davidow with me, although I haven't mentioned the possibility yet to her. Early next year, I'm hoping. I asked Jim to help keep me from hammering on the same old themes... But I know we'll find new avenues, too.

And I'm not at all sure what will come next. It'll be kinda fun to go to art openings again, but which ones will be worth writing about I never know.

I do know that I now have — thanks to the new DallasArtsRevue Review Fund — $150 to start to pay serious contributors, eventually, if the fund expands sufficiently, including moi. I hope to bring that amount up to $225, so I can pay more than one DARts writer, and I have at least one more great gallery (that's already evinced interest in supporting this site) targeted, but I just don't know. I'm hardly a great salesman, although I do believe in the product.

 

Mom's Painted Rock Cats — no panthers

 

Now to find some truly strange photographs to illustrate this page and send notice of it off to members and subscribers. Without them, this page downloads at 4 seconds flat — even on an elderly 56k dial-up modem, like mine.

P.S.: Last time I talked to the Bath House Boys, they assured me they were still thinking of doing the DallasArtsRevue Membership Exhibition as proposed so very long ago. Possibly in 2005.

Unless somebody else comes along to do most of the heavy lifting, I'm staying out of the exhibition production business till then. It's grand to have ambition. But it's even nicer to have time and energy.

 

As always, I am open to ideas and feedback from DARts Members, Subscribers, Advetisers or readers. Your comments will go under the logo below. As sometimes, I'm holding back from proclaiming this Rumble just to see if anybody goes here without being directed hereto. — J R Compton
 

top

DARts Index
Art Calendar

[an error occurred while processing this directive] hits