February   March   2003
	The DARts Membership Show at the Bath House The White Rock Lake Journal Show The next DARts Hit & Run Membership Show

Click on any of the images here to see their site origins.

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February 21

'm pretty well rested after the flurry that was Tranquilla. Phew!

But, of course, I'm in the big middle of another rush now. I'm doing even more web sites.

I was already doing this little DallasArtsRevue.com thing, of course. And my friend Jim Dolan's LotusEaters.net; my client, the Joel Cooner Gallery site; my freebie Creative Arts Center site and the Dance Council.

Now, suddenly, was recreating the Texas Sculpture Association site and developing a new site for The Art House on Routh that old friend Barbara West is directing.

That last one is up, running, and I've let go of it now. Blessed relief...
 

I'm also learning — or at least taking a class in — Dreamweaver software. So, to put it mildly, either my head is exploding or about to, or it's fallen into bed in a semi-burnt out state of quasi-unconsciousness.

I just looked at the clock and decided I could safely put starting this Ramble off for at least another day. But I've been procrastinating this task now for months.

Besides, I've already started. Not sure what I have to say, but of course that never stopped me before. And I have no idea what goofy manner I'll choose to illustrate this page. So, it's a great place to start.

 
I just heard from Chris Fulmer. Besides wanting me to sell her some — oh, did I tell you I've actually sold more photographs than I did all of last year, that's important, too, especially to me, but, as I was saying — photos of her work at Tranquilla, which I haven't done, at least partially because I was so very full of Tranquilla there for awhile, and then suddenly not. It feels awfully good not to be involved in it, at all, for another while, at least.

Besides wanting pix, she wanted to tell me that, despite the longish while since the show, she'd sold a piece to some folks who saw it at the show. Another coup in a long line of Tranquilla transactions.

Dana Jackson was the first to sell something — the one of hers I hung in the bathroom with some of my own. The same people bought another of hers a few days later. Then they commissioned her to do another. Eventually, she sold five paintings from showing at Tranquilla. She was ecstatic, of course, especially since that was the first time she'd ever showed her work.

I'm delighted, too, even though I only sold one piece. I did seriously reconsider my prices, however. At the show, I went along with what other people who should know told me. Next time, I'm selling cheaper.

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I don't remember what order the rest followed, and I can't go back and check all my old E-mail, because the Universe arranges it ever so carefully that, every couple of months (3-11, to be precise), many of my E-mails disappear in some new software or hardware failure, crash, spatial distortion, dissolution with earthly ties, or something.

I'm a collector. And this ongoing finger flick from On High helps me keep some of my collections in check, although I'm buying (it's in the process of being Fed Exed to me — I almost got into a fight with the surly delivery guy last time 'cause I left a note doubting his existence, since he didn't leave any notes or notices, so I hope I'm not around when he comes pounding my door down this time, but I'm eagerly awaiting) a 120-gigabyte FireWire hard drive (to help store more and more and more data that I accumulate in other, more digital realms).

This was, as the date at the top notes, written back in Early February, the last time I felt guilty enough to write one of these again. Since then, I got the hard drive, had to return it, because it was as noisy as a small jet warming up on the tarmac; got it replaced by a same-size box that holds just as much, only it's quiet as a mouse, costs the same and looks nicer; with only its big, deep blue glowing eye to remind me it's still running.

Helps to have all these paying jobs. None will make me rich, but they do help support my habits, chief of which you are now reading.

120 gigabytes is 6 times the size of my current hard drive, which was overflowing with stuff I just have to keep in easy reach. The new box will help. Speed up Photoshop if nothing else, and there's lots else.
 

nyhoo. I don't remember what order the rest followed, but Carol & Larry sold one — Carol said "A friend of Chris' called and is buying it on installment — we have done this with several people, with great success."

Norm sold one during the show to Ruth Wiseman (who should be famous for moving the first Dallas art gallery into Deep Elm/Fair Park, when that nearly forgotten area was coming out of its nearly 50-year warehouse coma after being hot in Dallas music in the Nineteen 30s). Later, Kathy sold one of hers to Ruth and her daughter.

I know Marty and Richard sold at least one pot, and I'm trying to recall if Sheila did, too. I hope so.

Art did not. But then all he had in the show was that one, big, rocker that rocked itself off its rocker at the opening after someone swung it a little too intensely. Luckily, it crashed when no one was under it and did not damage the floor. Gorgeous piece, that. It and Chris' pieces really set off our entryway, let visitors know immediately that they weren't in Kansas anymore.

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Suzanne E-mailed that she "Just wanted to tell you that the Tranquilla show worked well for me. About a week or so after the show someone called me to buy Bones Can Dance for her husband, who is also an artist, for Christmas. I was pleased and also very glad I joined you all for the show. I learned a lot."

So did we all. Several people called, E-mailed or talked about how much we learned.

Tranquilla was fun, exciting, nerve-wracking, fierce, empowering, learning, teaching, marvelously loose most of the time. And some other emotions, too, naturally. It was fabulous, but I didn't want to do another in any kind of quick succession.

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I submitted two exhibition proposals to the Bath House by their extended deadline of January 15. They assured me they would announce the wieners on February 15, but that has came and went, and I haven't heard anything from them.

My proposals were big deals with circles and arrows and color pictures on the front and everything. One proposal was for a showing of my White Rock Lake Journal, which I always seem to tout on these rambles.

And the other was for a DallasArtsRevue Supporting Membership Exhibition that Kathy and I would curate but not be in, and which would be organized very similarly to the show that oughtta be that I ranted on much earlier in this game.

Both of my proposals -- sans the circles, arrows and photographs -- for Bath House Cultural Center shows are now online:

• The DARts Membership Show
• The White Rock Lake Journal Exhibition

When I don't hear, I usually assume the worst, but I'm trying not to, because these shows could be grand fun and worth waiting for the announcements of the winners.

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In my usual not-knowing paranoia I panicked at first, and then engaged in a dribble of ongoing dread for the last month or so.

Today, in the E-mail, I was notified that the committee liked both proposals, but...

To wit:

The committee liked both of your proposals. However, they recommended that we review your Dallas Arts Revue proposal again in the near future and reconsider it for a slot in late 2004 or early 2005.

The committee accepted the White Rock Lake Journal proposal. Our tentative plan is to have three exhibitions going on at the same time in either March or April of 2004.

We booked a mixed media show for the main gallery called Nautical Mile, which deals with water, fish, nature, etc. Kathy Boortz proposed a small show of her work for the small gallery in the back, too.

Nice company!

We would like to have your photographs in the hallway gallery during that time. We can also display additional photographs in the lobby area, where you can show 5-7 photographs (depending on size).

ahoo! Amazing. Halleluja!

Kathy and I had been worrying about all this for awhile now. We're good at worrying. And we have been extra careful not to hold back from expressing opinions when opinions were needed, even at City-run centers. Even though these proposals were pending. All together a nerve-wracking pursuit.

Another DARts Membership show could happen much sooner than the conditionally approved Bath House show possibility — later this year at probably a commercial real estate location with a parking lot. It might even be near identifiable street names.

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Real estate agent and DARts Friend Maryanne has been chomping at the bit to track down a commercial building for us. And just yesterday (March 9, 2003) I told Kathy to let her.

Kathy said that our favorite real estate agent had a building that would qualify already, but she doesn't have a key for it. Yet.

It's been long enough ago that I don't quite even believe my own stories to my self about what an ordeal Tranquilla was, although Kathy is quick to remind me.

I'd like the show up before summer, so we don't have to hassle with air-conditioning. Plus, there's a bunch new DARts Supporting Members.

And probably even some older ones who didn't think much of the Tranquilla idea until they read about all us artists actually selling work at a three-day show.

Although Tranquilla did well at attracting viewers and attenders, the crowds did thin a bit toward the end of the run. I like saying toward the end of the run, as if the run were extended. Maybe I should fess up and just say, by the second and third day.

BTW, any future show is likely to be just as quick. Hit and Run shows is what we've been calling them. I don't think it makes any sense to keep a show open much longer than that. Although I'm open to discussion on this and all other aspects of these shows.

E-mail JR about anything.

Gallery sitting for even that long became an issue, even a problem sometimes. Some artists thought that, just because nobody was visiting during their shift, they should be able to pack up and go home, because they were bored or tired. Even though people came early and late throughout the weekend.

Perhaps if I'm careful to complain about this early, it won't be a problem later...

But this next, second DARts show is yet only a glimmer, and as long as possible, especially as busy as both Kathy and I have been lately, I'd like to keep it out there on the steady, event horizon, neither diminishing or getting particularly closer.
 

And then another, much bigger deal — a definite maybe DARts Membership show late next year or in early Ought Five at the Bath House. Wowie, kazowie! I'm getting geesebumps.

DallasArtsRevue reader Lynda Martin of Gainsville has identified our rakish bird as a Muscovy Drake, which she describes as "amazing ducks originally from South America. We have about twenty on our 2 livestock ponds. They make a hissing sound instead of quacking and love to fly."

 What else?

Oh, Joan of Art had a really good show involving Dallas artists.

In case you missed it, we had a really positive review of both the show and a panel discussion that the artists in Pairings participated in. Right about then, I decided to simultaneously sheath the axe (if not bury it) and to not pay quite so much attention to Dallas' name-changingest institution, anyway.

We have not been formally invited to their upcoming Wish auction, and we probably won't go, even though some good local artists' work will be in it.

The MAC seems to have become a traveling show venue for anything but Dallas artists. But what's new? Dallas artists are showing in the foyer and the new works space, project room, closet on the side, whatever they call it.

We've decided to call it the Local Art Closet. Which works out to be The MAC LAC, which seems entirely appropriate.

I haven't checked the site stats lately, but I suspect, little by little, more people are finding out about DARts. I still have several hundred business cards — all with the old, no longer useful E-mail address. It really looks bad to cross out the old @ddress and scrawl in the new one.

I checked in early March, and we're doing extraordinarily well. We broke 30,000 visits (not hits) per month. People are spending an average of more than 7 minutes on this site — that's a lifetime in Net Time. And we've gone over 219,984 visits overall since September 19, 2001 (When DARts moved to Earthlink).

Those stats make this site my most popular site ever — I quit doing Fontaholics Anonymous when it got to 200,000 hits sometime last century.

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I've long been considering a new business card to hand out. But almost everyone I proffer one of the old ones to has already heard of the site and visited it.

Actually, as of yesterday, there are exactly 600 web pages on this site. A bunch of them are, however, Jump Pages (notices of pages that got moved with mechanisms to auto bounce the hapless reader to the new address) and other navigational pages.
 

The new E-mail address on any new business card would be nearly permanent. I've already paid for 8 more years of ownership of the www.DallasArtsRevue.com URL.

... and lately I've been reconsidering the possibility of buying www.DallasArtsReview.com in addition, since a lot of people who don't pay that much attention have spelled it that way.

When the printed version was publicized many years ago in the Dallas Times Herald, that writer (a subscriber, yet) spelled it incorrectly, also. And I correct a couple people a week, still.

The cheapest place I've seen that offered one, referral page at an alt URL was $25/year, which is not too much money, I suppose, to rein in misspellers and mis thinkers.

I've been thinking about a new business card to hand out. Kathy's been after me for about a year now to do a brochure to leave around town.

I've been avoiding brochuredom, because it wastes trees, and I used to do brochures professionally, and I just don't believe in them as much as I believe in word of mouth. 2% return on direct mail is considered fabulous. I want more than that, and I think word of mouth delivers much higher response percentages.

But this, proposed business card design kinda combines the two...
 

ddly, my office is awash in paper. A place for everything, and everything all over the place. But I don't use much paper, except when I have to print photographs or Epiphany Cards (which we still haven't sent out this year, breaking a long-term record) or exhibition proposals.

All these indented purple paragraphs are being typed in March, and although I can now see the floor in this office — Kathy was astonished, it's not a heckuva lot cleaner, although I made it all the way to the Container Store last week, all ready to buy a 30-inch wide, five-feet tall Skandia shelf, but I'd forgot my wallet and checkbook...

I'm wanting a bigish shelf right over there (points toward window with left hand), with a desk-like platform, since this desk is always full of stuff.

The paper this office is utterly inundated with is paper people send me, mostly via the U.S. postal system. I use the bumpless backs of 9 x 12 and larger envelopes as combo mouse and note pads. The side with the seam bumps my optical mouse, so I can't use it.

All that B.S. about The Paperless Office has come true, to some extent. I don't generate much of the stuff. But I sure get a lot of it that I have to deal with, and often I just don't.

[  insert photographic image of JR's Office drowning in paper, looking more like a trashpit than a great metropolitan newspaper ]

Actually, this place is looking more like most of the newspapers I've worked for in my slow arching journalism career -- The Texas Catholic, Dallas NOTES, Instant Karma Komix, Hooka (the Humanitarian Order for Kosmic Awareness), The Austin Sun, Austin's The RAG, River City News, etc.

I like paper. I like touching the nicer grades I don't get much of anymore. I often think of Gerald Burns wonderful cartoon of the late Dallas artist Linda Finnell when I fondle paper.

I liked printing stuff on it, and handing it to people for them to read. I liked exchanging those printed papers for money, too. It was an easy, direct exchange.

I love using the internet, however. Yet another excuse to not use a lot of paper — besides the fact that it is almost always the most expensive part of any print job — is that the net kills a lot fewer trees.

Kathy called me a former hippie earlier today. "Former?" I protested.

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But I like my hair shorter, and next time I go to the barber — I picked him out because he had an actual, revolving barber pole (that's since stopped, like the grandfather's clock that stopped, short, never to go again, when, the old, man, died.) — [ I love writing these Rambles if for no other reason than the challenge of keeping up with all the accumulated punctuation necessities ]...

Part of my loving the internet is learning new things. I am gradually both learning new software and learning more about readers' needs for navigation and other issues for this publication.

I'd forgot I'd written about this. This is the first page, I've ever done on DallasArtsRevue that was actually begun in Dreamweaver.

I thought and worried about the transition into the new software so long, I just had to go ahead and do it, even though the parts I still don't know about this web-page-making software, still scare me silly.

The new software is something I bought two years (and two whole number versions) ago. Dreamweaver. I've been using PageMill for what seems like ever but could only be less than ten years, since the Internet isn't even that old yet.

I was a Beta Tester for PageMill (and PageMaker before it). I did not learn Dreamweaver when I bought it. I've bought six separate books along the way, each time promising myself that this time, I'd finally learn it. But I haven't.

I bought another book last week. The MX version of the version 3 edition I bought two years ago — Lynda Weinman's Dreamweaver MX H•O•T Hands-On Training (lynda.com/books, 2003)

The main difference is that I'm actually reading this book. I'm still taking the class (Spring Break as I write), but I've warned the teacher I'm not gonna do her copy-everything-in-sight, "make-work homework assignments," because I have actual sites to do.

Lately, I'm learning the ware by bounds and leaps. Some things still stymie me — including some things I jumped ahead of myself doing on the TSA site. But I now, finally, have faith and confidence I'll figure it out. Though I have not yet...

I still use PageMill every day. For awhile I hated Dreamweaver, all complicated and different and stupid and...

Then I started appreciating some of its features. I used PageMill to hurry up development of Art House's site. But I'm using Dreamweaver (most of the time, I still go back and forth) to build the TSA site.

Gradually, I've used Dreamweaver more and more. Now, I'm almost beginning to think about depending upon it. For one lovely thing, it lets me type longer dashes, no longer always doubling hyphens to make do.

Only the first of these ( - – — ; left to right: a hyphen, an En Dash and an Em Dash, are possible with PageMill. I used to be a really picky typesetter — I know, aren't they all, and some of that typographical (and grammatical, as Kathy will attest) fussiness continues.

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The second word in the next paragraph should now be was.

DARts is done in all PageMill (what they call orphan software, because it turned out Adobe ignored most of my and a lot of other beta testers' feedback when they upped it to version 3.0, then dropped it out of sight, when they bought another web development software. They'd only kept it that long to stay in competition with Front Page.

But I digress. Which, of course, what a Ramble is all about.)

The fifth word in the following graph should now be did.

ut soon, soon, I will take DARts into Dreamweaver. Which will eventually make everything easier, I still believe, even after all these years of finding out, step by painful step, that computers never make anything easier or quicker, just more adaptable to the even- and ever- faster changing technology.

I went through nearly all the DARts' pages twice last week. First to add the new nav bar to the top of most every page. Turns out I missed a few pages, like these Ramble pages and probably some others hidden in crannies and nooks yon and thither. The second time to correct the first of two errors I made when I created the new nav bar.

The second error was that I forgot to put a link on the image map (nav bar) where it used to say "Home." It was easier to change the image to not say "Home" than to change all 4 or 5 or 6 hundred pages.

When I loaded DARts into Dreamweaver's Site Manager, it reported that it checked 599 files. All of those — I watched them stream by — were web pages. Which means there are now at least 600 pages of DARts online. Or will be when I post this page sometime this week.

The plan is to make the vertical space between the absolute top of these web pages (called "above the fold") and the first bit of story, visually shorter.

The book I'm most dependent upon for learning web philosophy is Douglas K Van Duyne, James A Landay and Jason I Hong's The Design of Sites (Addison Wesley – 2003), which may not have as profound an effect on me as Adrian Wilson's The Design of Books (Peregrine Smith, Inc. – 1974) had on me 30 years ago, but it deals with the newer tech in a similarly philosophical, as well as technical and design-wise on a systems basis, with this new presentation format and how people have learned to use it, so far.
 

On my second recent trip through all the DARts pages, I began to think about applying a more standardized typography to all DARts web pages, including the earlier, much more varied ones.

Dreamweaver will help this task, because for the first time, I can establish and apply styles to text on all the pages. Then later, when I change my mind yet again, I can just change the style, and all instances of it throughout the site will change automatically.

I want DARts to look hand made. Which it definitely is and probably will always be. But I also want it to load faster and be easier to navigate and read.

I want readers to be able to find what you need quicker, without stumbling over a lot of junk you really don't want to have to deal with.

I've been holding off on all those Subscribe blurbs I used to scatter shot every page with. Now I'm thinking one per page is probably enough. Although, the rate of membership is down, so maybe I'm wrong — again.

And I want you to know where you are "in the book," how to get back where you want to get back to, and to be able find what else is on the page you are already on, without plowing through all the text between to get there.

Hence the light blue boxes and red triangles at the tops of many pages. I am trying to signal "page contents" with that particular shade of blue, and list the page's contents without cluttering up the vertical space with fancy, slow-loading On This Page hedlets.

A lot of knowing and understanding this still very fledgling technology, and being able to use it proficiently and efficiently, has to do with how people have come to expect how to deal with web pages.

I'm attempting to use already established, learned behaviors as well as introducing a few of my own.

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And I really have only a couple of clues.

But I'm willing to buy some vowels.

But more than that, I need to sleep. It's 4:20 ayem on Saturday, February 22, and in too few short hours, Kathy's coming by, so we can go look at way too much art on the Dallas Art Dealer Association's Winter Gallery Twinkle.
 

Later:

So far, this page takes six seconds to load. Actually, it'd be a little quicker than that, because you may well have gone through another DARts page to get here, so your computer has already cached the nav bar at the top.

Now 7 seconds.

Of course, that was before I added all these cute pictures. End total is exactly 20 seconds, which is what my Dreamweaver teacher at El Centro (Miss Perky) says is perfect.

That's a second (1/60th of a minute) saved. Maybe you've even read another Midnight Ramble page. That's another second (1/3,600th of an hour) saved. So this much text and images has taken about four seconds to download — before pictures.

Kathy goes all glazed over when I talk tech or computer talk. I suppose you will, too.

I'm beginning to get some vague hints from the Universe as to which pictures should go on this page. A barber pole, for example. I found one at BarberShopAntiques.com. The bit came from http://adamshorsesupp.

And the photo of Being Nowhere and Going That Same Way (The Story of Dallas) came from my personal website, where there's also a photo of new member Tom Stem's studio windows. Everything else came from somewhere else on this site.

Click most any pic on this page to get magically transported somewhere else.
 

March 11

I don't call these things rambles for nothing.

Lately, a whole month later than the Bath House's February 15 promise to disclose who won their show lottery, we still haven't heard. Maybe nobody has.

See above.

But I've been thinking how much DARts depends on galleries to sense what's going on in the world if visual and experimental art in Dallas, Texas.

This dependency seems more than a little lame. Instead of mindlessly reviewing show after show after show, ad nauseam, Kathy and I are compiling lists of artists we want to talk to.

We don't want to be constrained to only talking with DARts Subscribers and Supporting Members, although both of you groups are very important to us, of course.

We always want to talk with you and hear your concerns and share your joys and problems with DARts. Feel free to E-mail us anytime.

We also know that we are seriously deficient in knowing young artists. We're only getting elderlier — we're both in our 50s — I late therein; Kathy just barely, and we're not sure how else to find interesting young artists but to ask you.

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????

o you know of any interesting young artists we should talk with, see art by, visit studios of, link, photo their work, record their words, etc?

I've long understood that

Community = Friends + Friends of Friends

I even tried to do some stories back at the DARE Newsletter that would be based on this tangential form of community outreach. Unfortunately, the powers that were then did not understand the power of community or friends or friends of friends.

They kept telling me who I should talk to. They couldn't let it fall on chance.

Perhaps it's finally time to chance some more community. It might take a while, but it'll be worth it. I can feel it in my bones.

Meanwhile, I'm beginning to standardize text, headline, subtext, byline, caption, and whatever other forms words and pictures create on web pages.

I continue to learn how people read and navigate web sites. And I will continue to apply that knowledge to DARts, hoping it will help readers read and navigate and come back.

I've avoided having online forums, simply because that sounds like a lot of work, and somebody would have to constantly edit out spam, OT (off topic) discussions, cross talk and other idiocies.

I even recently downloaded some software that is supposed to make it all easier. But, like I said above, computers don't really make anything easier, they just make more things possible.

This Ramble has probably rambled enough.

I want to picture this page up a bit, just to break the tedium of gray text — and to make me, the visual guy, happier. But soon, soon, I'll be E-mailing all of you to tell you this page is.

And sure enough, it is.
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