Art Blogging

I think web journals (blogs) are underexploited as a promotional vehicle. There has been a lot of news lately about bigwigs at huge companies like Intel starting blogs that allow them to talk person-to-person with the average Joe employee, which is probably a good thing on the whole. What I'm talking about, though, is promotion for the little guy.

The other night in Austin I was at a gathering of local artists meeting to critique each other's work and offer suggestions; I was invited there by a painter friend. Most people brought paintings; one guy had poems written on index cards that I had originally seen hanging on a coat hanger above his kitchen table, and another had a short video with footage of the World Trade Center attacks and subsequent events, and Radiohead's "Paranoid Android" as the soundtrack. (He says it was booed out of the Alamo as being pro-Bush, which I think is ridiculous.)

In any case, they were planning to have regular meetings and were talking about starting a website, registering a domain name, etc. I think it would be great for them to host blogs. For one thing, it would offer a "day in the life of the artist" sort of view and would be a great venue for promoting their works. They could have regular blogs sort of like magazine columns, or shorter miniseries-style peeks into different parts of the artistic process, or whatever, as well as just letting anyone have their own journal. It would not be too hard for them to design a distinctive and classy look for their website that would stand out from the average blog templates (and they could find local graphic artists, type designers, web designers, etc. to help them).

I think blogs could build the sort of bonds that people with pretentions to connoiseurship would value very highly, and it could even bolster Austin's overall image as a vibrant art scene, at least in a small way.