Visual art news, views & reviews in Dallas, Texas, USA
Visual art
news, views & reviews
in Dallas, Texas, USA
Home Index Calendar Opportunities ThEdblog Resources Feedback Reviews Google
this Site
Art
by DallasArtsRevue Members How
to Join SSiT Artists
with Websites Visual Art
Groups Contact
Us
Every artwork on this page is copyright 2008
by the originating artist. No reproduction or approximation of these works
may be created in any medium for any commercial or nonprofit use without
specific written permission from the artist.
September 2002
Gang of 32:
I really like the proposed meeting date of September 21, but an astrologically inclined friend whom I usually consult with before I plan these things and just didn't this time, says it's really gonna be bad juju on the night of the Full Harvest Moon, September 21.
He says I should postpone it to the following Thursday, but Kathy can't make it that night, because she's still hoping her Artists Way class will make at the Creative Arts Center (It didn't this week, but it might next. She's taught it before, and it sounds intriguing. Besides, I'm hoping she'll become gainfully employed, so at least one of us is).
But ya never know about these things. Astro Ace says no deal on the following Saturday, September 28, either. I think most of you won't be able or want to come on a Thursday night, although a few who said they couldn't make it the 21st might be.
It would give me an additional six days to clean this place up. Now, when I go into the rooms I thought I'd cleaned, I am only reminded that there's miles to go before I sleep, everywhere I toss or turn.
Perhaps you've already read the amazing news, or maybe you'll learn about it here, now. But DARts got its first Patron level support check two days ago. Anonymous donors, signed check for $250. I was audibly moved, shocked, joyed.
The accompanying letter from the anonymous Patron -- minus the personal bits -- is posted on the feedback page linked at the top of the cover.
Now I'm wondering if I should make more pages public or more pages private. For too long perhaps, I thought more hits was the only way to judge the success of this rag. I've not dared to check out the hit charts online at Earthlink, lately, because I was careful to only make the most popular DARts pages private, and the stats are likely down, way down.
|
Wrong again. I looked. The hits just keep on coming. However... The most popular page on DallasArtsRevue.com is now my newish, custom 404 page. A 404 error is what you get when you mistype a web address, or there isn't a page with that address on the site, or one of my links is flat wrong. I only recently learned how to make a custom 404 page. I wanted to stem the tide of Page Not Found errors. Which it did. Handily. There were only 11 such misses last month, and many of those were mine, testing the new 404 page. Before I uploaded my custom 404 page, a Page Not Found error would bring up an Earthlink (my internet service provider) page and not even refer the errant surfer back to this site. Suddenly they'd be left off in some nowhere web place without any direct links back to DARts. An ugly situation for a web guy who pays a lot of attention to making this site navigable. The new DARts 404 page gives surfers a chance to find what they're actually looking for on this site. There's a DARts nav bar, some handy links, an apology and even an E-mail link asking them what they clicked to get them there, although only one person has used that E-mail link since I instituted that page. And the 404 page has been accessed more than 2,355 times since then.
You can get the new DARts 404 page by typing almost anything else gibberish past www.DallasArtsRevue dot com slash. If you'd like to increase that page's already massive popularity. Or you can click this link, just to check it out. Except it's not that interesting a page, right now. Which brings up an interesting opportunity. Since it's The Most Popular Page on This Site, it really needs to have some Dallas area artist's work on it. I'm thinking something that looks confused, confusing, compoundingly complex or just plain lost. I don't want a cartoon. I want art. Any medium is eligible, as long as it can be digitized and rendered on a web page. Consider this a Members-Only Opportunity -- to have your art seen by more than two thousand people (or one lost person more than two thousand times, or some where in between) a month, and counting. Naturally, if your work is selected for this prime bit of cyber real estate, I'd link it to your Supporting Member page, like I try to do any time any member's name comes up in DARts text. Which is why I'm always after you to clue me into any public exhibition any of you have. The prize in this contest is having your piece on that inordinantly popular page -- for awhile, until something I like better comes along or I get tired of the old one and have something new to replace it with. I'll promise each one will stay up at least a week. Kinda like the FIPMO (Favorite Invitation or Postcard of the MOment) on the Calendar pages. Maybe we could call it the 404mo... Meanwhile, in other error news, there's only been .6% of Error 401s (Authorization required) this last month, to a total of 144 instances. Not sure, but I think that includes all the times any of us try to access a Members Only page, whether we get through or not. . In other words, each of those times, someone clicked a link connected to a members-only page. So far, nobody's complained about the restricted pages. |
Except for Brenda Guyton's brave move to become DARts' first DARts Subscriber, no one else has. Which means, among other things, that I'm putting at least as much effort into the second (members only) half of the DARts Calendar as the first for just you, me, and Brenda.
However, I did switch member Terri Stone's art pic in FIPMO, too to FIPMO one, so it would attract more attention to her upcoming show at Boyd (hint, hint).
I mean, does a $250 check from a genuine Patron who wants me to continue doing what I'm doing mean I should continue on the recent path towards trying to attract more paying Supporters and Subscribers? Or that DARts should be working towards more readers? I guess there's really only one person to ask that of.
By now I should know enough about E-mail that, if one asks more than one question per letter, one is asking for it (to be mostly ignored). A couple of rambles ago, I posed a mountain of interrogatives, and though I got a lot of really needed answers, and pretty quickly, I still didn't get responses to all my inquiries (Can ya tell I have an online Thesaurus?). And I probably never will.
The only real question from this Ramble is whether I ought to even consider changing the meeting date. I don't think I should worry about changing the date, but since that question is why I started this particular Ramble in the first place, I guess I'll ask anyway. Should I?
Astro says that night would be bad. That what the meeting hopes to accomplish wouldn't happen. My primary hope for that meeting -- besides getting my house clean and presentable by then -- is that we'd gather together, talk a little about this DallasArtsRevue thing and a lot about us and our art and our lives and have fun and eat food and socialize and get to know each other. I'm not expecting anything but a good time and a lot of people.
Just so you know.
I'm still trepidatious about the change to Pay For from Free Access. Much more fear there than about the party/meeting date, actually. I love Harvest Moons, and as you know by now, any excuse for another Ramble...
But it also seems that getting a check for $250 in the mail from complete strangers who don't even appreciate my stance on The Contempt (I didn't invent that nickname, but when I heard it, it made a lot of sense), but thought what I was doing (otherwise) was important enough to financially support, might actually be a major bit of support for paid access.
I should point out that the anonymous Patron's letter said DVAC, not DCCA. And I should note here as elsewhere that I was a major fan of DVAC, of Katherine Wagner's post Patricia Meadows art center directions, of where it was going till it suddenly and without notice to us members (Thus the contempt), fired Barbara West and veered off into the whole 'nother direction of becoming yet another Contemporary Art Center.
Never mind that there was already one of those using the name Contemporary just across town. Or that there were ample historic precedents using the same name. (See Which Contemporary?) But don't get me started...
Careful readers of these Rambles (I keep wanting to call them Rumples, which might more closely match my lifestyle...) will remember that I've said it's laudatory that Dallas should finally get a genuine Contemporary Arts Center, and that Ms. Davidow may be the best person in Dallas to make it real. (I only hope she'll remember that she's in Dallas, and that Dallas artists have much to offer.)
Except, of course, that she's a particularly lousy communicator -- and some of her dealings with artists have been combatative and controversial, to say the least.
Much of the reason for me asking you questions about DARts' direction, is that there has to be a better way of running a community organization, even a for profit one, than just handing new directions down from on high and in secret as Joan has.
If DARts is to be (or at least adequately represent) a community, it should -- and I think it does -- have many voices, lots of differing opinions, variety. I am remembering a scene from about 28 years ago, when Stony Burns, the former Editor of the underground newspaper I was then Editing (Dallas NOTES) told me and my staff that we couldn't even sit down and eat an apple together, so varied were our politics and points of view.
Without notice, at our next staff meeting, I passed around a very large, Red Delicious apple. Everybody took a bite and passed it on. The point was taken. We giggled and laughed as we all caught onto the joke while the apple circulated around the room.
And the lesson for the upcoming potluck supper seems applicable. I only wish the anonymous members could join us. Maybe they could wear masks (or sacks or stockings or...) on their faces.
The currently proposed date -- September 21 -- is the edge of a new season, another bit of symbolism that should appeal. Oh, I don't know. Mayhaps Astro Ace is being paranoid; he is known for his own brand of that kind of fervor. But maybe he's right, too.
I realize that date is firmly within the confines of another Mercury Retrograde, which always throws things like communications, computers, directions, etc. out of whack. I'll be sure to put up a good, solid map by mid this month.
I have high happy hopes for this meeting. And maybe if we're already aware of some of the contingencies, we can try just a little harder and pull it off. I think so. I hope so.
I'll have some apples here, if anyone wants to take a bite.
;j r
|
Feel free to contact me about anything in this missive or anything else DARts.
after midnight on September 6, 2002
with the tan 404 box added after
midnight on September 7.
