Many artists regularly visit the websites of museums, galleries, art
magazines, and art-material manufacturers to get information and
instruction on their craft, but not everyone is aware of the
increasingly popular blogs.
by Daniel Grant
Many artists regularly visit the websites of museums, galleries, art
magazines, and art-material manufacturers to get information and
instruction on their craft, but not everyone is aware of the
increasingly popular blogs. For those new to this realm of online
communication, a blog (short for web log) is an online diary of sorts,
usually containing the creator’s thoughts and opinions, with new
comments added as often as the writer chooses—sometimes more than once
a day. Responses from readers are solicited, creating a dialogue or,
depending on the number of responses, a round table. In the face of
more static websites, which are updated every few weeks or every month,
blogs have become the most timely and interactive area of the online
world.
The readers of a particular blog are often like-minded individuals
looking to discuss subjects of common interest. However, in the case of
an artist’s blog, there may be many others—such as critics, collectors,
and curators—who are more interested in learning about the artist’s
process and viewing his or her work than participating in conversation.
In fact, many artists advise potential collectors to visit their blogs
before making a purchasing decision. “I used to hold open studios and
do art fairs, where I would constantly interact with collectors, but
now I leave the paintings at the gallery and rarely meet the people
buying my work,” admits San Francisco artist Anna L. Conti. “I started
the blog so people could learn more about my work and my day-to-day
life as an artist.” Included in Conti’s blog is everything from details
of a painting she is putting on display in an upcoming exhibition, to
the type of frame used for a particular work, to an installation view
of a future show.
Another painter, Elizabeth Torak of Pawlet, Vermont, also directs
her blog toward collectors “who are already familiar with my work and
want to find out more about me.” She notes that people often tell her
they wish they could watch her go through the process of creating a
painting, so she designed her blog to show the step-by-step process of
completing a new work, from preliminary drawings, to outlining the
shapes on a canvas, to the finishing touches. In one instance, a couple
that had previously purchased several paintings by Torak was interested
in acquiring another but didn’t see anything they wanted at her
gallery. The gallery director directed them to her blog, where, over
the course of six weeks, they viewed the progress of a new painting and
eventually purchased it. Six months later, Torak met these collectors
at the opening of her show, “and they told me how much fun they had
following the progress of the painting on the blog,” she says. “I had
been completely unaware they were doing so and was pleasantly
surprised.”
Unlike many other web bloggers, Torak sometimes allows months to go
by between postings, largely because she is busy painting. She admits
that blogging offers both benefits and drawbacks. On the plus side,
explaining her creative process on her site helps “clarify my ideas,”
she explains. “Every time I write about my work, I’m amazed at how
thoughts come together, and that’s a very satisfying experience.” The
negative side is feeling “a pressure to continually post messages,” she
says. “There are only so many hours a day I can sit in front of a
computer.” Because blogging is an interactive endeavor, communication
with people who expect to see a new message every day requires artists
to stay on top of their sites.
Putting up new messages on a regular basis is important for another
reason as well: The algorithm that the search engine Google uses to
rank sites in importance is partly based on the frequency of new
postings. Artists who allow long periods of time to lapse between new
messages may become more difficult to find in a standard internet
search. Certainly, that isn’t the only way sites are ranked; messages
that contain and repeatedly use words that commonly appear on a site
(such as “California coastline” or “plein air”), as well as the number
of links to and from the blog, will make a site easier to find. For
this reason, a website with a focused topic is always advantageous.
Says Lorelle VanFossen, a search engine optimization consultant in
Gaston, Oregon, who periodically teaches classes for artists on how to
use the web for personal and professional advancement, “The more
focused your content, the more seriously readers will take you.”
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