Monthly Archive: March 2007
30 Mar 2007: John Scalzi on Escaping Poverty
John Scalzi is a best-selling author whose blog I read regularly. Today he posted about how to escape from poverty. While this topic isn’t specifically directed towards artists, I did find that there were many resonances with what I perceive to be success factors in a creative career.
30 Mar 2007: Garage Art [3 Comments]
My great idea for an alternative art venue—backyard garages and sheds—is not such a unique idea. It’s been going on in Toronto for about 4 years.
30 Mar 2007: Studio Activities: Oct 2006-Mar 2007
This post is a summary of my recent activity, a kind of quarterly report but twice as long since it covers a six-month period. You get to find out about all the exciting things I’ve been doing—plus the drudgery—that have pre-empted any sort of cohesive blogging strategy.
30 Mar 2007: Gallery Admission Fees Part 4: The Numbers Game [1 Comment]
Some of the questions I look at in this post include the following: How do we value artistic activity in contemporary society? If a gallery starts charging admission fees will anyone not in the “church of contemporary art” come? What do aggregate attendance numbers tell us?
30 Mar 2007: Overcoming Fear of The Unknown: Goal Setting and Role Playing [2 Comments]
In this post I present goal setting and role playing as strategies for overcoming fear, specifically as it applies to situations artist might come across as they develop their careers.
30 Mar 2007: Research-Induced Paralysis: The Paradox of Choice [3 Comments]
On the surface, the variety of choice we have available to us in contemporary society seems to be the very symbol of freedom. But as we find in Barry Schwarz’ book The Paradox of Choice, this very freedom causes some people to become paralyzed into inaction. I talk about these issues in the context of my practice as a visual artist.
10 Mar 2007: Battle Robots: The Art Version
More Battle Robot joy, this time featuring stars of the art world instead of my in-laws.
09 Mar 2007: Vernacular Art Redux [1 Comment]
A Hollywood movie studio has decided to make a movie based on a Thomas Kinkade painting. Kinkade is famous for mass-marketing his work through mall, mail-order, and TV. That this information came into my awareness less than a day after a post in which I attempted to defend vernacular art is most likely a particularly fast-acting strain of karma.
09 Mar 2007: Snow Day [3 Comments]
Just when I was getting ready to put the finishing touches on my the fourth and hopefully final post in my gallery admission fees series, we were hit with some extreme weather here in Saskatoon. Instead of writing, I made a new piece in the front yard.
09 Mar 2007: Gallery Admission Fees Part 3: View from the Soapbox
This is my third post prompted by the impeding debate about admission fees to Saskatoon’s Mendel Art Gallery. In this post I get up on my soapbox and spew venom on both sides of the fee vs. free admission debate. I support reasonable user fees for public galleries and museums and explain why. I’m also in favour of exhibiting so-called “vernacular” art, and explain my reasons even though I don’t like much of this kind of work.
08 Mar 2007: Gallery Admission Fees Part 2: Japan [1 Comment]
This is my second post prompted by the impending debate about instituting admission fees to Saskatoon’s Mendel Art Gallery. It’s a description of my experiences with fees, pricing, and associated policies in Japan, at the Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art.
08 Mar 2007: Gallery Admission Fees Part 1: An Info-dump
This post is an information-dump of links and quotes related to gallery admission fees. The links come from a number of countries and organizational contexts. Some of the information is biased in favour admission fees, some is against, and some is in between.
07 Mar 2007: A Rant: Civic Politicians, Specious Arguments, and Salted Smoked Fish [4 Comments]
This post is a rant against the weak arguments that Saskatoon City Councillor Maurice Neault used to support his opposition to a proposed expansion of the Mendel Art Gallery. Said arguments were made at the City Council meeting Monday 26 February, 2007.