Well, since the month is pretty well gone, maybe I should do another ramble. I've been thinking about doing one, and I guess this is it. Finally.

Anybody who's been watching has probably figured out that I'm doing another site-wide (Maybe I should call it “site-narrow,” since it mostly only applies to new pages and those I stumble onto when updating or correcting or whatever else I do with old pages.) redesign.

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The impetus came from one of those guys who write me and tell me what a lousy job of designing this site I do, even though they don't even have a web site their self. Trouble was, when I thought about this guy — Jacques' — feedback, he was right on every count. I so much prefer it when I'm right and they're wrong, but that paradigm did not obtain, so we got, instead of me gloating about how right I usually am, change.

Jacques Haba and I have been exchanging E-mails. One of the gems he told me was that I should go from the general on the cover page to the particular on other pages. Another was that the blue I used to use to denote people confused visitors, some of whom could easily think they were links, since links are blue, too.

He also said there's too many different colors. As a colorist I resemble that remark, but I've been de-colorizing DARts pages ever since.

So the cover (the Home page, the one at www.DallasArtsRevue.com) is now a regular, web site starter page. One of those that gives first-time visitors some idea of what they're in for here. (Oh, I just remembered to add the bit about “600 page of.” Even though I really believe there's more than 700 now. I just don't wanna hafta count them all again.

A current software site search just reported a total of “890 documents” and more than 8,000 “total files,” [It were too quick to track exactly] whatever Dreamweaver means by those words. Total files probably includes image files, Cascading Style Sheet documents and web pages [still two separate words].)

The current cover is a whimsical bit of color foolery that matches the tone and hues of the hugely slow downloading comparison of Frances Bagley and Tom Orr's sculpture that I tried to make mostly visual and less me yaking about it. Another experiment.

Nothing is permanent. Change is the only constant. Though it settles in for whiles sometimes when I coast. This won't probably be the last spate of alteration here. But it's energizing and kinda exciting at this, to use Watergatese, point in time.

 

I still want the cover to be a little about what's coming next, what I'm up to, what other pages are getting updated, etc. (Like the bit about Dallas having the sixth most art-related businesses in the U.S. that's now on the [usually Old] News page, although I haven't posted that anywhere yet — soon, soon, except it's already ages old info that doesn't really prove anything).

I've been dreaming for more than a year about a really surreal cover page that points to stuff inside like this one does. only with dreamy images kinda like everybody was doing about six years ago when I was producing Fontaholics Anonymous, linking the then-hundreds of free font sites on the net.

I wish I could link to that, but I abandoned it when the top page got to 200,000 hits, to work full time on DallasArtsRevue. Maybe I'll find some old art work to spice up this page. About half the fun of doing one of these rambles on an actual page is finding goofy pictures to go with it. (Last month's ramble was an actual E-mail [like the earliest ones started out — nice to kick back to the beginnings sometimes]).

Wow. Two whole pragraphs without a link. How can that be?

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I've gone all the way round on being on the White Rock Lake Artists Studio Tour next year. I'd decided against it and even written against the idea in a coupla places I have no idea where, so I can't go back and rewrite and replace. Right now, this minute, I'm thinking I shouldn't even try to sell my photographs — one visitor wanted to pay me $5 for one of the big ones at last October's tour. That's as close as I got to selling anything.

Visit the really old page from last year's White Rock Lake Artists Studio Tour and get confused a little or just stay here and stay confused a lot.

I had some fascinating discussions with some students and old friends, and I argued with one uh... person, who insisted that I had a “painter's eye.” When I corrected her — I dunno, maybe she was drunk, stoned or just [hands floating with palms upwards hoping some better description comes to mind] uh... — saying, “you mean a photographer's eye,” she insisted on the painter nomer, perhaps because she thought she was one of those.

She wouldn't back down. I'd had that essentially same argument once, a long time ago, with a very drunk, pretty good painter. He wouldn't back down, either.

We get stuck in our own ways of seeing sometimes. And of saying things, too.

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Gerald Burns drawing of me
in an actual encounter with a person
at D-Art who said that, ca. 1982

 

It's offensive to go into somebody else's home on a tour, not buy anything, then argue with them about what kind of art they should be doing or what kind of eye they have, especially when there's my fabulous photographs all around all around.

I've only been a photographer for 41 years now. Maybe she was right, and I should chuck all that and start dabbling with oils or acrylics, pastels, watercolors or finger goo; push paint around; maybe do abstracts in Southwestern colors or something. Pitch the Photoshop and computer and web stuff and start in with brushes.

Kinda left me with a bad taste for being on a tour. But I think next time, instead of desecrating my once lovely bare dining room walls with photographs for sale, I should just let visitors trapse through my house to this office and make them watch me working on DARts.

I could be sitting in here cussing all the idiots who send me drivel about their latest art show while I try to fold acres of type into the one or two liners I have to condense into to fit everything into the calendar's single page.

Too easy a link, but way overdue here.

Speaking of which, I abandoned the increasingly difficult to work with multiple column layout of the calendar page, back to a much easier to deal with open format. Since the blue type could easily confuse link seekers (Aren't we all?), I abandoned that color practice, making it even easier to format caendar entries — although I still forget sometimes to put in the part about where events are.

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Now I'm wondering if I should abandon the pink for dates, but I tried italic, and that's just ugly, although I like the plainness of black and bold black. It's sure easier to format that way. I hope it's easier on your eyes. It's easier on mine.

I still prefer dark red for titles, books, magazines and other people's web sites. Like I say, Italics sucks.

One thing I've learned in changing up the cover page is that just as many people stumble into there as before, but now I'm certain that a lot fewer folk are reading the articles. I was pretty sure readers would not mind jumping to continued pages after I presented Jim Dolan's excellent Interview with Bert and Ann Scherbarth. When it started on the cover, nearly (within about five hits) as many people read the last of three pages as read the second one.

See Jim Dolan's excellent Scherbarth Interview pages one, two and three.

The next time I tried that jumping bit for longer stories, on the long, strange trip Anna and I went on to experience the Grove Rat... er... Art In The Hood tour, it didn't seem to work all that well. Maybe because Bert & Ann have more friends than the folk on the Rat Tour (I tried to contact them to get accurate titles for pieces I photographed, but only one artist — the best of the bunch — ever replied. Maybe Morpheus got to them.)

See Art In The Funky Town Hood pages one, two and three.

Or maybe Anna's and my writing was just not as compelling as Jim Dolan's. I guess there's always the possibility that some people don't actually like or like seeing dead rats.

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Local Color -
actual Grove Rat from
the Art In The Hood tour

 

I kinda liked it better when I thought all those hits on the cover page meant people were actually reading and appreciating my prose about whatever the heck I was writing about that week.

Another change is that I'm writing less. Or at least I thought I was. Maybe I'm actually writing more. I'm certainly enjoying it more. Espcially writing different kinds of things. I no longer feel compelled to post a new story every 7-10 days. Removing that compunction actually sped up my stories, however. Rule-breakers don't stop breaking when the rules change.

In general, as much as I know that commercial galleries are the backbone of the Dallas arts community/scene, it's wonderful fun to find decent local art at places that are not commercial galleries.

 

And then, just as I was thinking in the back of my mind that I ought to go ahead and save what I'd written so far, my stupid, blankety-blank Dreamweaver program crashed. Again. For about the thousandth time in the last year. If you are just starting in the web page making biz, I'm sure you can find a better program than the ever-so-funky and weird and damnable Dreamweaver (ah... babyshit green is such a perfect color for that entity.)

In one of the How To Weber8 books I read on the sly at the bookstore, I learned that telling readers about your software bores the living daylights out of them.

Sorry.

But then I'm still using Macintosh OS-9.1, although I've delved into OS-X lately, and my client Joel Cooner, whose site and photography I do once a week or so, keeps saying it's inevitable that we go over to the new system. His son, Zach, uses X, as do most new Mac users. And in all likelihood, so will I. This is the longest I've ever dallied before falling headlong into the latest Mac system, but then I am past 60 years young.

See the wonderful website I photograph and produce for Joel Cooner Gallery of tribal art.

Mac OS 9 Forever!

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Had to stop and think awhile. Put up another full set of White Rock Lake Journal pictures. It's nearly spring, and the ducks are getting randy and rowdy. That always makes me deep down happy. Showing my work, yeah, but making the pictures, too. There's joy in doing what the Universe put me here to do.

Visit the ever-changing pages of J R's New White Rock Lake Journal on this website.

Much as there is joy in making DallasArtsRevue, although that sometimes gets to be pain. Especially the calendar. I was thinking today, again, that someday I'll have the unmitigated temerity to make the calendar a subscriber- and members-only page. Put your money where my tired fingers usually are.

I appreciate the members and subscribers tremendously, and there are more of those each year, but I seem to be making less and less money into my dotage, rather than the always hoped for, more and more. Oh, someday, I'll win the lottery or get rich again. I've been rich before, and I just worked through it. Pinching and saving pretty much like this poor church mouse does now.

That's when I started DallasArtsRevue — back when I was a thousandaire. I figured I oughtta do good work. I hate it when people say they “do it for the community,” because they hardly ever really do. And I still do do pretty good work — and Good works, too. But a good salary or living would be a big help.

I ain't complaining, just wishing out loud. Tis the astrological season to ask for what I want. My social life has picked up something terrific in recent weeks, after asking lots over the last year or so. And I've always got plenty to do. A little more money would round out the trinity. I figure one more paying job — or several more paid pages — would just about do it.

Should I charge for the calendar? Is it worth actual money?

Are you listening, Universe?

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text below about this drawing by Gerald Burns

 

Then there's The Great Joan Davidow Interview I'd been looking forward to ever since she was hired to carry D-Art (then DVAC) into the 21st Century.

It all seems a letdown now, but while I was working at it, setting it up, accidentally sending proposed co-interviewer Jim Dolan off on wild goose chase to the old D-Art addresses at where is now a big nothing, me assuming all along that everybody knows where the fool thing is, and him calling information and getting nothing from asking where D-Art is, and me thinking now maybe it's time I started calling it the whatever the hell it is they want me to be calling it this week.

Check out Jim Dolan's DARts Supporting Member page to see who he is.

The interview was another opportunity to experiment with this not-yet hammered down new medium. While I was wading through all that verbiage, I learned several possibilities and even put some of them into practice. Nice how that works.

It was amazing as it happened. I probably should have had a list of questions that needed asking. But I've known those questions for already for years, and I only went in there with an envelope stuck in my pocket (that I never looked at. It had three words scribbled on it. Probably important words) and a tape recorder.

What you see on the one, great, long interview page is what was said, minus the impertinent question by the woman Joan dragged to the interview. I had planned to bring Dolan, the peacemaker, probably for pretty much the same reasons. But then I got him lost, so only Joan's second and I showed up.

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This all cannot help but remind me of another meeting at another D-Art, many years ago (in the early 80s). That's what Gerald Burns' drawing above is all about. Sometime after I'd made D-Arts' second director, Patricia Medows, cry, she invited me to the old building that's now a vacant lot — the one that was held together with plaques and pegboard walls — obstensibly for lunch.

There's an index of Gerald Burns stories and pictures on this site and off this site in the DARts Archives section.

There was no lunch. There was only Patricia, Treasurer Sherry Mick, and a couple other board persons, all there to gang up on poor, defenseless — and hungry — J R. It was amusing, later, and I agree with Gerald that it was a truly ironical “Great Moment in Dallas Art.” He wasn't there, drew the drawing after the fact, but he knew the people. My hair is less black now, but the shape's about the same.

This time felt deja vooey all over again.

When I got there about five minutes early, Joan disappeared for about fifteen minutes, and I talked about new and good TV shows with the nice lady in the office, sporadically leaving out trying to track down the disappeared director, came back, and talked TV some more.

And I've wondered several time since why I don't review TV shows too, since I already watch and review as many movies as I possibly can. So maybe I will.

Check out my extensive DallasArtsRevue Movie review pages.

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Michael J Pollard, 1971
photo by J R Compton

Joan D'art (They actually called it D'art, pronounced “duh art,” in the earliest years, after they fired founder Mary Ward. Making fun of that affectation netted the Meadows weeping and my visit for lunch. Anyway, Joan) came in fifteen minutes later, and we set up the inner view, not in her office, where I hoped to do it, where there was lots of light, so I coulda peppered the story with photographs of her — not unlike I'd done with actor Michael Pollard (of Bonnie & Clyde movie fame back in the early 70s, when I was a staff photog forThe Dallas Dimes Terrible), and all her clippings on the wall

I am only experimenting here with italics, which is pro nunced it al ix, not eye tal ix, for those of us who care about such things, it having been thought to have something to do with how people from Eye-tally wrote.

In the font I type these things in — as opposed to the font you may have set to or your browser is defaulted to have your version of this and other web pages appear in — izz yug lee.

I'd planned to let the taper roll on while I took pix. But Joan wanted it done in the great gallery of the Republic of the Dallas Contemporary Doodah, so there we sat in stiff plastic chairs talking long and long.

Her latest assistant, from New York, started by asking a long series of questions about this site, since she'd never heard of DallasArtsRevue, of course. I had little patience for her impedence, so I deflected her questions and got into the interview with Joan.

People who know, said I asked the right questions, but Joan's answers may not have been as on-target. I let it go. I'd hammered away at All Those Lost Truths too many times already. This was her chance to parry.

All Those Lost Truths and every other story or important mention of “the institution,” including the interview itself but not yet cluding in this story, are linked in the controversial D-Art Index page.

I deleted one little bit Joan had asked me to right after it was said — that was revealing about, not Joan herself, but about The Institution (She called it “The Institution” all the way through, never once using the term she wants us to call it by, except when we were directly discussing that latest name).

Nothing else was removed. It took me several days to transcribe the hour and a half of recording. I'd wanted to run the finished deal by Joan to make sure I got it right, though I knew she doesn't use the internet, and has no E-mail address, so I couldn't just send it to her. I'd have to print it up and cart it over to her office, which seemed absurdly Last Century.

Then I learned she was out of town well into the next week, and I was in a hurry — not sure why. It didn't make sense later. Now it seems kinda stupid. But right then it seemed all-fired important to get the interview online and out of my head.

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Gerald Burns drawing, date unknown

 

I still feel bad for not running the text by Joan, but I was wrong to say I would — I should never have. It was a dumb thing for any journalist to promise, but I did not say it to entice her into doing the interview. I said it after the interview was over. Because of that indiscretion, however, I was cautious to be absolutely accurate about everything either of us said, including including some of the stupider things I said.

Some of those were included in the footnotes — the first time I'd included interactive footnotes in a DARts story.

Others, like me saying that 40 or 50 thousand people see DallasArtsRevue every month, I just let pass, not sure then how to re- and de-fine my statement. The numbers are exaggerated, though not completely inaccurate.

This site has attracted that many people in a month. I could have been legit saying “up to 40 or 50 thousand.” But the usual usual (modal average) is 30,000+ individual visits to the totality of pages on this site every month (Including all those people who can't seem to find the Toulouse Lautrec postcard anywhere else on the net).

Check out the Tolouse Lautrec postcard in the J R's Collection section of DARts.

Again, I assume that's not 30 thou different people, and that not all of them were actually looking for this particular site. Most of them that wants to be here return more than monthly, I assume, although they could be looking for dart throwing competitions or equipment, I suppose.

 

I tried holding the taper in my hand for the interview, but it was in deep palsy mode on my abundant nervous energy so bad I had to put it down on the empty chair. Much as I trust that valiant little $30 tape recorder, I still picked it up and made sure tape was rolling at least three times during the interview — even after checking the playback volume before we began.

I still have the sense that my visit with Joan Davidow was important, although I couldn't tell you why or whether that importance made it into the resulting page. I'm too scared still to check the page itself to learn how many visitors it got, but not many did when I first checked. There's no way to tell how many people made it all the way to the end of such a looooooong page.

[It was not a slow-loading page like the Tom Orr - Frances Bagley page, which is a whole ‘nother experiment. I'm still absorbing that. At least I noted its long slowidity on the home page, although that may not be an entirely good idea either, but at least it's honest.]

Of the 6 people I asked to read through the Joan interview once I got it online, to check for accuracy, spelling, facts, grammar, etc., only one  — a fairly important one who shall remain anonymous — reported back. That one was thorough and won my further admiration and appreciation.

I kinda wished I'd got to take pictures of Joan. It would have relieved the largely unrelenting long gray text of that page, although I spiced it up with texty special ƒX. But I prolly wooda got seriously distracted photoing her, and I mighta forgot the interview part.

For awhile, I planned to go back and photo the paintings she talked about in the great gallery, but in the rush to publication — and the knowledge that any pictures added would have necessitated a jump-to page, so each page would load quickly enough (under 20 seconds is my normal goal, although the Bagley-Orr page rocks on at a steady 95 seconds.). ...

I'm proud of my part in the thing — especially the questions and knowledge of history (not all of which did I show off — there were some juicy details I was dying to ask but knew I shouldn't and so I didn't, but I'd still love to know the answers to) and all the little nuances you might not have noticed, but about which I am about to really start rambling. Then I'll quit and start another gRamble (grumble?) to maybe get back on the monthly schedule of rambles I've promised on too many pages to go back and change all of now.

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from Gerald Burns' long series of mole drawings, date unknown

 

The aforementioned interactive footnotes evolved into a big production. They grew in elegance and practicality as my transcription and online formatting continued. When I was finally finished, it was possible to click on a footnote link in the text, which bomped the reader down to the numbered footnote section at the bottom, where they could read the note and decide whether to go off to another page sometimes that expanded or extended the data, or go back up to that same place in the text they just came from.

That was intended to keep people from willy nilly clicking on links and getting carted off no one ever knows quite where my links will take 'em.

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This whole technique was an extrapolation from another of Jacques' suggestions to perhaps keep readers from getting lost in the aether. I'm still thinking about that. As a Good Net Citizen I owe it to my readers to pack them off wherever on the net will net them the best and most complete information.

As my own weber8or, however, I'm honor bound to keep 'em here on this site till I've utterly exhausted their patience.

(Hence the royal runaround one is automatically forwarded along (keel hauled) after typing a miscreant link or clicking on one my own idiot mis-links. First comes the dreaded custom DARts 404 Link Not Found page, which then auto forwards us all — I get caught up in that same goofy game sometimes, fear not — to the latest updatedest contents/index/site-map page(s), where you can find most anything on this site, if you've the patience of Job and really wanted to be here in the first place.)

With the footnotes, I dropped readers to the bottom of that same interview page, and there, they could decide for themselves whether to go back up to the place in the interview text that they started from or go flying off on yet another tangent.

The instructions were precise, including mention of another page off somewhere different. Kinda a full-cirlce of possibilities that way. But the implementation is substantially more intricate and obtuse than just floating the undescribed links in the big middle or ordinary text, like on most DARts pages till now.

On this page — as on the calendar — I've begun using quiet little, in-place footish notes in- or out-dented to be noticeably out of the normal flow of the story itself (and in grayer text for the same visual reasons), to suggest where readers might browse off to and why. I'm getting better at this. I wonder if it helps.

Depending upon Supporting Members' and Subscribers' feedback [E-mail me], the technique may expand to most DARts pages in future. It's elegant, quick and provides the info without bouncing.

I'd never really considered doing this till I'd got this far down this page the fifth or sixth time I rewrote this growing page — more experimental exploration in a campaign of changes that continues to continue.

Some pages, like this, the cover and the Feedback page, serve the particular focus (or maybe dispersion) of sending DARts readers off to somewhere else interesting on this web site. These pages are opportunities to introduce readers to new possibilities without having them wander off to other websites, from which it's sometimes difficult and confusing to get back here.

I usually go along with the standard spelling that word as its separte components, but it just ain't and shouldn't ought to be. It's website, not web site, despite dictionaries and fussy wordists.

Other pages, like our many Resource pages, including the Artists With Web Pages page are intended to send readers off into the aether of the Internet where so much else is.

See the recently updated DARts Resource Index for links to and descriptions of all our Resource pages. Our Artists With Web Pages page is open to any Dallas or Texas artist. Free. Go there for precise (and curmudgeonly) submission requirements and info.

To send feedback, ask questions, offer up answers or most anything else,
E-mail J R.
Thanks,

; j r

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DARts Contents
Art Calendar