It would seem, if one uses All­top as a gauge, that most artists and art blog­gers use word­press or type­pad or other free blog host­ing ser­vices. This con­fused me at first. Own­ing a domain name seems so impor­tant, installing Word­Press, refin­ing the blog to fit my taste, and cre­at­ing my own unique web­site –well, isn’t that a no-​brainer?

Turns out, I’m wrong. It’s not about the cool fac­tor of one’s own, paid for hosted at GoDaddy or else­where, blog web­site. It’s con­tent. It’s daily posts, it’s infor­ma­tion and links. Turns out, many artists are not geeks. Turns out, many artists aren’t mar­ried to geeks. I’m both blessed and cursed by my web knowl­edge. The skill-​set used in cre­at­ing this web­site do come in handy BUT cre­at­ing and main­tain­ing also demand much of my time. Whereas I could be in the stu­dio with my assem­blages, I delete spam com­ments, rearrange HTML to fit my taste, and other web main­te­nance duties which would not be nec­es­sary if I just posted on a free-​blog service.

Tis’ a conun­drum. I sup­pose it all boils down to be a bit of a con­trol freak, of want­ing a web page designed “just so” and not set­tling. I have this insane need to fid­get, to re-​invent my web space. I will sub­due the freak, put her in her proper cage, and just blog. From now on, I post and I do not design. I remain con­tent with this lay­out. Rob says artists with free blogs will even­tu­ally real­ize how they need to brand them­selves, that they need domain names and spe­cific sites. Per­haps he’s right… won­der what the aver­age time frame is for this to occur?

*mark this day, oh faith­ful friends and when you see the tem­plate of this web­site change, when the design is not con­stant, please con­tact me and remind me to stop this insane re-​building urge.

c