Sidetracked Charley

The cat bench If there is a lesson to be learned from this 46 days of retreat it is that it isn't all about me. As an artist trying to make it through trying economic times I must admit I sometimes forget that. Especially in light of shameless self promotion. The new art market is the internet and it takes more than just a website. In fact websites may be going the way of the book store these days. Along with galleries and art fairs. What is hot in this day and ethernet age is Facebook, Twitter and blogs. And an artist needs all three and Google + I am not a tweet twit though I have a twitter account and post links to my blogs routinely. Blogspot makes that very easy. And also linking to Facebook and Google +. And the marketing gurus tell you that you must be active on all platforms to catch the attention of the art buyer. This has been one of my good weeks in that regard. I have sold two photographs on gallery wrap canvas largely because of my posts on my Facebook fa...

Bridge to Nowhere? Facebook has been full of glitches and viruses for several weeks. Today it took our rather successful and quite fun little photographic group, Picture Picks, and reduced the members from 131 to 12. It won't let us communicate with any of the 131 to let them know what is going on. Since we have a new event running we opened it for ease in posting whether Facebook thinks you are a member or not. It has gotten me wondering why I am a member of Facebook. Seems the last couple weeks friends have left or been bounced off because of viruses and malware. Facebook continues to not vet any of its applications and oddly people seem to continue to play them and spread the disease. And lately posts seem to be all about "repost this if you agree." I hated chain letters as a child, hated chain e-mails as an adult, and loath this repost thing that is going on. So the question is to stay or not stay. If FB would allow it I would keep my fanpage and delete my pro...

I have two in fact. My regular profile and my fan page for Binford-Bell Studio. Or I think I do. Seems this morning Facebook is having a melt down. There have been an increasing number of glitches of late. Facebook sites improvements they are making as a reason. That and their fantastic growth and most of that among a different age dynamic - the older set. We utilize the popular social platform very differently than the teenage set. First we blog. And we want those blogs to post on Facebook. And they say they can be linked in easily. Yes, it is easy to link a blog in but they don't live up to posting new material every two hours promise. So now Facebook is trying to head us off at the pass by making its Notes more of a blog platform with fonts even and the ability to underline and bold text. They are a long way behind on that! I would be happy if they would just do well what they were designed to do which is let us interact in real time around the world. This morning FB will n...