Oil painter looking for studio

Anybody out there with space to rent? Or helpful suggestions? Contact Thomas Hunter at tshunter79@gmail.com. He says he’s getting desperate.

There would seem to be a need for a place for artists to post requests like Thomas’s. I know there are bulletin boards around town, but I’m not checking them, nor do I visit the Bozeman craigslist > community > artists page. Yet I’d be happy to rent my tripod if someone needed it for a day…

For now I’ll try adding an RSS feed in the sidebar that will pick up any listing in that craigslist category containing the work “art.” If anyone knows how to get all the category listings, or has other suggestions, please let me know. Meanwhile, it appears that either Thomas has competition, or he’s already on craigslist and it hasn’t helped so far.

Sculpture on the MSU campus

Have you ever wondered about the public sculptures around campus at MSU? Marjorie Smith provides some historical information about ten(+) of the works and the artists who made them; you can read her article here. But missing are the locations of the scuptures. How many do you know?

Secretary of the Arts?

There seems to be a groundswell of support behind a petition to create a Secretary of the Arts position. There was a Washington Post article on the movement, pointing out that a number of arts institutions and political organizations back the idea of consolidating arts-related activities at the federal level. Regardless of the advisability or likelihood of an actual Cabinet position, I consider this a way to convey my personal wish to keep the arts prominent in the national consciousness. The number of signatures is currently well over 100,000. If you want to add your voice to mine (#34929) and others, go sign the petition.

Northwest Biennial (early call for submissions)

A while back I posted a call for submissions for the Northwest Biennial held at the Tacoma Art Museum. I recently received the list of selected artists, and not one of you people was on it—unless you were using your Seattle or Portland address (and an alias). Which, come to think of it, looks like it would be a good strategy. No doubt the artists chosen are an excellent bunch; you’ll be able to judge for yourself when the show is up, January 31 – May 25, 2009. For an impression of the previous biennial, see the report from smart Seattle art critic/blogger Regina Hackett. However, I’m sure there are Montanans who deserve to be there. I realize a month and a half wasn’t much warning for a submission of this magnitude. So this time I’m giving you a year and a half. Deadline coming up in July 2010. New Year’s resolution, anyone?

NEA report: Women Artists: 1990-2005

Few surprises and little good news here. Nancy Ewart culls a few salient observations in a blog post at Chez NamasteNancy. Montana does well in the percentage of artists who are women (about half), but miserably in the compensation department, with women earning less than 65% of what men earn, though it’s slightly better if you consider only full-time artists. A partial explanation—and hope for the future—comes from the finding that in some areas, the women are younger. For example, the average female photographer was twelve years younger than the average male photographer. Women are also gaining in architecture, the highest-paid of the areas considered. Unfortunately, those trends don’t hold for artists in general. You can view the full report (PDF) at the NEA research page. By the way, in case you didn’t catch it before, Montana does do very well in the percentage of the population working in the fine arts.

Ray Sikorski writes about local artists

Ray Sikorski is a Bozeman-based freelance writer who sometimes writes about local artists. He has written about Kevin Connolly for the Christian Science Monitor, Gary Bates for the High Country News and Montana Magazine (that one’s not out yet), and an itinerant artist named Jim Mott who passed through Bozeman, staying at artist Mary Keefer’s house, also for the Christian Science Monitor. The article links are listed below:

A Legless Artist Documents the World in 32,000 Stares
Christian Science Monitor, January 22, 2008

Sculpting a reason to love the wind
High Country News, August 20, 2007

Itinerant Artist Will Paint for a Bed and a Meal
Christian Science Monitor, Oct. 16, 2007

I’ve seen firsthand on this site what happens with national media attention. When Kevin Connolly appeared on 20-20, Art Bozeman received over 2500 hits in the following 24 hours, thanks to appearing fairly high in search engine listings for some searches that people entered trying to track him down on the web.

Ray can be reached at logorhythmic AT hotmail.com.

Banner occasions

For those of you who don’t read About pages — or The Banner pages — consider this an open invitation to submit your artwork for the banner image at the top of this blog. I admit, at 140×770 pixels, it’s not the most convenient format. Sorry, this is a free blog and I don’t get to set the size. But, there is The Banner page where you can not only post a proper image, but also provide a blurb about it, including a link to your web site or whatever, if you wish. (When I say proper image, I actually mean your full image, re-sized to at most 450 pixels wide, but clickable to show an image any size you dare to post, as far as I know.)

Your image will be the first thing everyone sees for however long it is up. I don’t know how long that will be — depends on submission rate — but afterwards it will be archived at the Art Bozeman Banner Archive for the benefit of posterity and anyone else with too much time on their hands.

Woohoo!

This morning I checked Google results for searches on art bozeman blog, art bozeman, and bozeman art. This blog came up high on the first page for all three! This is an important milestone, because it should increase the attraction of posting here for anyone trying to reach the general public with information on art and art-related events in Bozeman. I’m looking for authors and information providers…