When I hatched the concept of Supporting
Members late last year, it was difficult to imagine as many as
ten subscribers. Now there's about fifteen of
[ 21 now. ]
you - including both sides of two couples,
one anonymous, one poet, the Texas Sculpture Association, and
at least a couple more people promising to send checks soon.
So color me more than slightly astonished.
Ever since DVAC, er... D-Art, er... Dallas
Center for Contemporary Art... sent out its monthly package a
couple months ago, including in its thick wad of promotional
materials and historical misstatements a form to submit names
for its annual fund-raising Legend
Awards Banquet, I've been thinking
how nice it would be to be selected, to be acknowledged, noticed,
celebrated, recognized.
Now, I fully realize what an incredible
long shot that would be. I mean, DCCA hardly acknowledges my
existence now, even though I'm a fully paid-up member of that
name-and-goal-changing organization.
When I was their official, Joan-approved
and promoted Archivist, they entirely ignored my historical input,
brushed it aside, blanked me and my hard-dug information about
the founding of that organization, and which birthday they should
be celebrating, and who.
More recently, they not only pointedly
did not invite Kathy or me to submit works to their mid-March
fund-raising Wish auction, they also did not invite us to attend
the press preview.
I,
of course, did my own, personal preview, just waltzed in there
-- twice. I came back
to see if anything
good else had been added -- took pictures and presented them
and the event in a largely unbiased manner, with even a blurb
on "the cover," although I have let my opinions about
the recent changes there be known in other places, a lot of other
places -- so many there's even a
subindex full of them now.
But still, it would have been nice to
be invited. Not being, was patently rude. But hardly unexpected.
So, if you have one of those forms, please
write me in as a candidate for official Legend status. If you
don't have one, ask DCCA to send you one. It may well be that
I am, as they too often say and I usually avoid cliches like
the plague they are, a legend in my own mind.
But I've been at this largely unremunerative
task for more than twenty
[ Actually, 23 years
now. ]
years now, publishing Dallas Arts Revue
any way I could or could afford. On paper from December 1979
through 1995 or 96, even I'm not sure when it was I got so mad
at DARE for not daring that I gave up on art almost altogether
for a couple of years, while I concentrated on poetry, things
literary and whatever else I was doing back then.
Oh
yeah, photography. My other great love. So nice that I get to
do a lot of that in this.
When I
was in college -- the U of D on the east Irving hill overlooking
Dallas in one direction and a swamp that later got itself called
Las Colinas in the other, finding out that I could remember artists'
names and styles so much better than writers,' even though I
couldn't draw, and photography was only beginning then, to achieve "Potential Art Form" status.
And
UD didn't even have a single photography class, so I could never
have got a degree
in it there, but falling
head over heels in love with the medium, so much more than English
Lit ever lit me into, although that's what I was supposedly "majoring
in" back then, what the degree I earned was in.
When I was in college, I thought I would
end up being a professional photographer of art, because I so
much admired the beautiful color photographs of David Smiths
art sitting, standing out on his meadow.
Turns out it's always been my great fallback.
When I'm depressed or angry or whatever, I go take pictures,
do photography till life -- and hope --
eventually reasserts itself. I can't not do photography any more
than I can't not do Dallas Arts Revue, any more than any of you
could not do art. But there for awhile, briefly, I didn't do
DARts.
I tried to set up a site right after
my snit with DARE, The MAC, et al, but it didn't take. I'd already
done several other websites by the mid 90s of that ancient, last
century, but I just didn't have the rhythm and verve engines
set right yet, so I had to wait awhile longer till the cosmic
opportunity rolled around again.
Time spent honing my photo craft.
It took again, finally, in April two
years ago, and the popularity - since last September 18, when
DARts jumped to clear, sharp Earthlink from the lying, cheating
scoundrels at Prodigy and could, finally, measure such things
objectively -- could then be directly measured in hits, pageviews
and visitors, all of which are now described in excruciating
detail on the Reports page in the
Feedback directory.
The site's popularity has steadily, though
unevenly, as the charts attest, risen since then. At the top
of that page is a comforting graph showing the long-term growth
of this major obsession of my life for the past nearly quarter
of a century in its one, highly visible, graphable instance of
the some-odd months since September 18 when we jumped ship to
Earthlink / Mindspring, although the publication has gone through
other, similar arcs
over the last quarter century.
That page itself is not even in the top
200 most popular pages on this site. But there are other, more
important statements DARts makes, so it's not too surprising.
Mostly that page is me trying to figure out what's proving popular,
thus what I should put the most energy into.
Like most art, I don't get to decide
what its popularity is all about, what people take away from
my energy into DARts. I just get to watch and try to figure out
how to parry some of that energy.
Like any other good growth path, the
Reports
Page Graph shows a roller
coaster ride, with sudden vertical drops to abysmality and equally
surprising, sometimes skyrocketing heights. I'd like to take
credit for the ups, but the stats indicate it's mostly serendipitous.
Which is as it should be.
If I could aim DARts, it might be dangerous.
The darts I do aim, however,
will likely keep me from achieving a lot of the acclaim I'd like.
But without
those darts, DARts would be vacuous, and probably a lot less
popular among
artists, although there's likely some administrators out there
who'd love to
see me and my pixelated rag fall off the face of the earth, or
at least move
to New Mexico.
Still, it would help awareness of this
electronic rag amazingly, if its editor / publisher / webguy
were to win that prestigious honor of living legendhood, even
if it has to be sponsored by my all-time favorite art target
of them all, D-Art.
Many of those other struggling artists
that we haven't yet reached with our word of mouth and business
card hand-out campaigns could finally find out about this thing,
and join in on all our reindeer games...
I'm pretty sure more galleries would
participate and get themselves listed on the
Calendar, and maybe some of them would even join as Supporting
Members or advertisers. Museums
would get it through their thick husks that I am real, that Dallas
Arts Revue is real, that even though we richly deserve it for
my... uh... ongoing obsession and mono (nearly) maniacal perseverance.
Doing DARts doesn't pay much in monetary
terms, and certainly not enough that I could afford a really
great ad campaign, as little as I believe in those, anyway. But
it certainly qualifies as a life's work.
It's what I do best and what I want to
keep on doing until I die. Or just before. Maybe then whatever
D-art is calling itself would finally admit that I was a legend,
then, when DARts was finally out of the picture.
Or something like that. I still feel
odd asking people to nominate me for an award. But I might just
qualify, I think I do, and the word from some of you might just
help.
[This
is me about a year later, having given this silly notion some
serious thought.
Can you imagine? Me, featured at a very expensive party designed
to raise money for The Contempt? Oh yeah, what a goofy notion.
Oh well. Would have loved the PR, but...]
Something else I'd like you supporting
members to think about, and tell me what you think, is advertising.
I think, now that DARts is as popular as it is, that I could
probably sell some ads to help support the ongoing effort and
help my obsession put a little more cash in my pocket, so I could,
feel like I was actually doing something worth my whiles and
wiles.
I don't want the damned things flashing
and popping all over the place, especially not in a banner, animated
or otherwise at the top of any page. But maybe some gentle, display
ads along the far edge on the calendar or some otherwise wildly
popular page might do.
Nothing
twitchy or flashy,
nothing slow-downloading or stupidly annoying,
DARts will always have standards. But some space sold to a higher
bidder might help pay some photo bills, support my various, expensive
art and other habits, net me a Macintosh-compliant USB scanner,
some more
[ Got the scanner last
month, thanks. ]
RAM, maybe a little peanut butter and
jam, too. You know, the essentials.
[ My Club... er... Mac
Cube's RAM has since got itself maxed out to 1.5 gigabumps.]
The problem, the issue of it, is that
I long-ago promised I'd never have any ads in DARts. Of course,
since then I've had ads for various services, that I needed a
car and lately that I needed to get rid of the one I got after
only two days of the first ad, so I can pay for a much better
one.
And I've been advertising - badly it
turns out and largely unsuccessfully, probably because the people
who need it the most are the least aware of the problem -- my
skills at seriously reducing download time for web pages and
web pictures. If you know anyone's site that needs serious assistance
- and they could probably afford some, tell them, tell me or
tell us all.
Oh, while I'm rambling on, I want to
say how amazed I am at the quality
and diversity and the quality
of the diversity you Supporting Members have provided DARts with.
Some pages go up in a few days, with utter simplicity and ease.
And others take months of wrangling and reshooting. But overall,
I'm utterly delighted with the wide and wild range of art presented
in your pages. Thanks for that, too.
You may not know it, but it's possible
to trade out pieces on your pages. In the web world, if you want
people to keep coming back, you have to change things, make them
better, newer, different. Like any other art form, you gotta
put energy into it, if you want people to put their energy back
into your presentations and projections.
If your changes become onerous to me,
I'll just back off and ignore you for
[ That's the official
policy now.]
awhile. But mostly I want you to be excited
about your pages and want to tell everybody who'll listen about
them and about the amazing deal you got on DARts.
( Kathy
recently showed me an ad for artists' web pages that they'd have
to pay nearly a thousand
dollars for and ongoing quarterly charges of hundreds of dollars
for about the same deal, no online shopping included, just like here.
She still thinks $50 a year is way too
cheap. But I'm sticking with that fee), ((or I did for awhile))
[ And
she may well be right.]
and for that excitement to show, and
be equally and oppositely reflected in audience participation.
I want people to 'hit' your pages and be amazed at what they
see there, so much they just gotta have one of their own. And
I want them to keep coming back for your little surprises along
the way.
I'm not suggesting you change everything
on the page or change constantly.
That would drive me over the brink I
tip too near too often already sometimes. But if you've done
something more recently than your page indicates, or something
in some new and exciting -- and maybe even scary -- direction,
what a perfect thing to put on a DARts page.
Send a slide or print in a stamped, self-addressed
envelope, attach a digital image to an E-mail or hand me something
to update your page(s).
Or at least talk to me about it. I want
us to both be happy about these things, and I love getting intelligent
E-mails from artists.
Hmm. That's a lot of venting. Think I'll
go back to bed and get those other four hours' sleep, so I can
count all eight later today. I want to look alive and happy when
Kathy drives in later. See you later, probably around Midnight,
when I get this sucker on the E-mail aether.
Well, it's later, and I got most of the
needed hunk of sleep. I feel better, so very glad I finally started
this month's rant, er, ramble. And, looking at the above, I think
I managed to say most of what needs saying. If not, the day after
the day after tomorrow is next month, and I'll need to do another
Ramble.
Thanks for listening.
ta
; j r
