7-11-10
Great New website from sa strong
http://www.sastrongart.com/

6-12-10

Art History Timeline
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/

4-18-10

I’ve been working on how to make this site more interactive, such as user and visitor comments, I hope I don’t mess anything up. My partner once told me I couldn’t ruin anything, but I have proved him wrong several times over the past 12 years, lol.

I was thinking about the site today and I am feeling grateful that we have been in business for 12 years, while we haven’t gotten rich yet, it has been a great experience to have “met” so many great artist. We remain committed to producing a quality site and spreading our love of art to the world. I think Dr. Davidson would be proud of us.

When we started this site, we started from scratch and while I love the look and functionality of our current site, our first effort remains my favorite,. It wasn’t as sophisticated as this one, but it was and is so satisfying to see an idea become reality.

Thank you for your support

Kirk Solomon
Joffery Joseph

Administrator@ArtOriginal.com

2-1-10
http://arkansasartists.com/

Art from my home state

12-15-09
7 Tips for selling your Art Online
http://emptyeasel.com/2007/04/30/7-tips-for-selling-art-online-how-to-he...

10-29-09
http://www.nga.gov/onlinetours/index.shtm

9-16-09
Early American Artist
http://www.thebrighamgalleries.com/Artists/EAA/EarlyAmericanArtists.htm

7-4-09

Artcyclopedia: Most Popular Artist
http://www.artcyclopedia.com/mostpopular.html

6-14-09

ReJoyce Marbella 2009!*

*June 16th is Bloomsday:
*

*A Stroll Through Ulysses - A collection of Joycean paintings by the Dublin
Artist Roger Cummiskey.
*

*Roger specializes in paintings that take their themes and titles from the
writings and wanderings of James Joyce.*

*June 18th. Celebrity and Press preview/reception:* Avenida del Mar,
Marbella, 19:30 to 23:00 - Fundraising inaugural cocktail party that will
include artists,sponsors and dignitaries for a new Contemporary Art Centre,
Marbella

*June 19th -21st. Public exhibition* of the collection at the* 1st Festival
Internacional de Arte Marbella
*that will take place from
11am to 11pm Friday and Saturday and from 11am to
6pm Sunday, Avenida del Mar, Marbella.

*Come see me at tent #7. *

*
**Bloomsday * - is an
annual celebration among James Joyce fans throughout the world, from Fort
Lauderdale to Melbourne. It is celebrated in at least sixty countries
worldwide, but nowhere so imaginatively, of course, as in Dublin. The novel,
Ulysses, by James Joyce recounts the hour-by-hour events of one day in
Dublin - June 16, 1904 - as an ordinary Dubliner, Leopold Bloom, wends his
way through the urban landscape, the odyssey of a modern-day Ulysses.
*ReJoyce Marbella 2009!* **

Image: *Ana Livia Plurabelle - River Liffey*

--
With kind regards,

Roger Cummiskey.

6-1-09
http://www.artbusiness.com/osoquunewec.html
Art in the New economy
ArtBusiness.com

5-1-09
L.A. artist's 'Truth' to be unveiled
Los Angeles Times

Sculptor and painter Artis Lane on Sojourner Truth: She personified women's rights, equal rights ... the struggling and understanding that was taken away from us because of slavery,¡¨
Artis Lane's bust of former slave Sojourner Truth, the first of a black woman in the U.S. Capitol, will be unveiled today.

By Ari B. Bloomekatz
April 28, 2009

Frank Sinatra's family purchased her portrait of President Kennedy. Rosa Parks asked her to design her congressional Gold Medal. And President Clinton bought her painting of Hillary.

Artis Lane's sculptures and paintings are in the private collections of Oprah Winfrey, Maya Angelou and Nelson Mandela. She has also created works for Michael Jordan, Quincy Jones and Armand Hammer.

But at 81, Lane is celebrating what may be her greatest commission.

Today, First Lady Michelle Obama will help unveil Lane's bronze bust of Sojourner Truth, a former slave and women's rights activist that will be the first sculpture of a black woman in the U.S. Capitol. The ceremony will take place in Emancipation Hall at the newly opened Capitol Visitor Center.

"The world's coming around to seeing black as beautiful," Lane said in an interview at her home in Los Angeles' Fairfax district. "When I came up, they were laughing at darker people."

The campaign to memorialize Truth in the nation's Capitol began more than a decade ago. A self-educated abolitionist who changed her name from Isabella Baumfree, Truth played a large role in the women's suffrage movement and in 1851 delivered the famous "Ain't I a Woman?" speech at a women's rights convention in Ohio.

Truth, who died in 1883, "encompassed all aspects of a truly free woman," Lane said. "She personified women's rights, equal rights . . . the struggling and understanding that was taken away from us because of slavery."

E. Faye Williams, chairwoman of the nonprofit National Congress of Black Women, which commissioned the work, said many believed that Truth should stand alongside women's rights figures Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Lucretia Mott in a portrait monument that was placed in the Capitol Rotunda in 1997.

Congressional legislation to include Truth in that group failed, Williams said. But Congress approved a bill in 2006 to memorialize the black suffragist in a stand-alone sculpture. Williams said Lane was the first choice to produce the work.

To help her prepare, Lane collected dozens of photographs and writings from Truth's life. She read one of her favorite quotations aloud last week while she got ready for her trip east.

If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back and get it right side up again. And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.

Lane chuckled as her voice filled with excitement.

"In those days, a woman over 6 feet tall and working in the fields, they accused her of being manly," Lane said. "She bared her chest and said ain't I a woman? I've worked harder than some men in the fields, bleeding and have taken more whippings and all that. She's someone I deeply admire."

Lane traces her earliest memory of sculpting to about age 4, when she took one of her grandmother's dolls to a stream and tried to re-create the porcelain figure out of mud.

The granddaughter of abolitionist educators, Lane was born Artis Shreve in 1927 in North Buxton, an all-black town near Chatham in Ontario, Canada. She later moved about 100 miles west to Ann Arbor, Mich., where her father worked as a mechanic.

Lane said her ancestry is African and German and included among forebears is Mary Ann Shadd Cary, who launched the Provincial Freeman, an abolitionist newspaper.

As a child, Lane quickly took to drawing. Her teachers often tried to force her to use her right hand, instead of her left.

She went to college to study art in Toronto before switching to Cranbrook Academy of Art and then to UCLA. She became known early on for her portraits but has also gained fame in sculpting and other kinds of painting.

Last year, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa presented Lane with the Dream of Los Angeles award. The California African American Museum honored her with a lifetime achievement award in 2007 and staged a retrospective of more than 60 years of her work.

Among the pieces included in the exhibition titled "A Woman's Journey: The Life and Work of Artis Lane" were sculptures "Emerging Woman" and "Emerging First Man." The emergence of the bronze figures from their ceramic molds symbolizes man's emergence from material thinking into spiritual consciousness.

Also included in the show were landscape paintings, sculptures of Jerry Buss and Earvin "Magic" Johnson and a portrait of former Detroit Mayor Coleman A. Young.

Even though much of her work is groundbreaking, she doesn't consider herself a protest artist and said that instead she's "making a statement of how the mortal man has disrupted the harmony of our lives."

Julian Bond, chairman of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People, has a Lane portrait of him hanging in his bedroom in Washington, D.C. He said Lane was the perfect choice to sculpt Truth.

"Her family -- her personal story -- is so compelling, and in some ways she embodies the history of black Americans," Bond said.

"She's tied to all of this. It's as if somebody said 'Who could do this best?' And immediately think of her. Not simply because of her talent, but because of her history."

ari.bloomekatz@latimes.com

4-9-09
Check out and Enter Art Events from around the world!
-see AO Art Events

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQXl5KCqWAk
Keith Richards
Slipping Away(live)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ErJKRd7hfQ
Anthony Hamilton
Do you feel me

It does not get better than this!

March 11, 2009

Solomon Live! on Kindle
http://www.amazon.com/Solomon-Live-J-K/dp/0615215505

http://www.amazon.com/Solomon-Live/dp/B001V5K29M/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=di...

My book is now available on Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle. I'm working on my Kindle image, but I am excited to join the many authors on Kindle.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00154JDAI/ref=kinw_dp_gy

March 1, 2009

Taking Chance
Based on real-life events, Lt. Col. Michael Strobl (Bacon), a volunteer military escort officer, accompanies the body of 19-year-old Marine Chance Phelps back to his hometown of Dubois, Wyoming

Today I had to deliver the worst news a person my could tell someone to one of clients at work and this evening I happened to watch the movie “Taking Chance” staring Kelvin Bacon.

In this movie, which portrayed the journey of Lt. Michael Strob as he escorted the body of Marine Chance Phelps to his hometown, the director and actors showed the best of their craft as it was a touching and dignified portrayal of Americans and our soldiers.

I experienced the beauty and healing power of art as the movie told the story of the young life of Chance Phelps and the powerful dignity and well deserved respect of our fighting men and women.

This was such an American and world reaffirming film that I would ask you to see it; it gives such an honorable perspective to lives of American service people and ordinary Americans.

After the movie, I sat at my computer and I couldn’t get it out of my mind, it moved me and caused me to really appreciate the value of art in our lives. Who hasn’t been moved by a particular piece of music, a photograph or a movie? How can you assign a value to something that affects your life, something that causes you to look at life in a new way? No matter what your feelings are about a particular war, the lives that are affected can’t help but touch your soul.

Obviously I am an art lover, but this evening, the movie “Taking Chance” reaffirmed the value of art as an important and healing part of life. How blessed we are to have talented people who can bring such honor to people such as Lt. Col Michael Strobl and our fallen brother Lance Corporal Chance Phelps.

Chance Phelps Foundation
http://www.chancephelps.org/

2-1-09

MIA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sei-eEjy4g

1-6-09
*Visual Artists at farinelli***

* *

*The Andalusian International Artists Group* exhibit a selection of their
paintings in Marbella from *next Friday, 9th January* at the newly
opening *galeria
farinelli restaurante* on Calle Miguel Cano, Edificio Marbella 6.

*Cocktail reception 7-9PM. *

* *

Driss Hsino, the gallery/restaurant owner said, "I am delighted with the
very professional approach from the AIA-Group and believe that their artists
will substantially contribute to the success of this new venture. The works
on display are of very different subject matters ranging through
representational and modern, but all with the same aim - that is to reflect
on the artist's view of the world, and maybe sometimes entering into the
realms of fantasy. We are continuing with a formula that we successfully
used in Dubai over the last number of years and hope that the people of
Marbella will enjoy the combination of café and art."

The AIA-Group was formed five years ago by professional and dedicated visual
artists from around Europe and the USA, who are all living and working in
the Province of Andalucía. Further information is available from the
Chairman, Roger Cummiskey at 952 592 652 or their web site *
www.aia-group.net*

Directions and invitation.

1-1-09

Happy New Year!!
We are entering our 11th year in business and thank you for your support! Our goal was and is, to be a site where artist may show and/or sell their work without going through the gatekeepers.

7 Tips for Selling Art Online: How to Help Buyers Find your Artwork
by Dan

http://emptyeasel.com/2007/04/30/7-tips-for-selling-art-online-how-to-he...

Signing up with a bigger, well-known art website to help sell your art online is usually pretty easy and sometimes even free. But after a few months with no sales many of you will begin to ask one very important question:

“How can I get buyers to find my art online?”

You see, unlike the sign-up process, the whole art selling thing is definitely NOT a piece of cake. So instead of just waiting and hoping art collectors will find you, here are seven ways that you can start directing potential buyers to your artwork right now.

1. Write better artwork descriptions.
The best websites for selling your art will allow and even encourage you to write full descriptions for each artwork you upload, as well as a bio and artist statement.

Not only should these paragraphs be easy to read and free of spelling, grammar, and punctuation mistakes, but they should also be optimized for search engines like Google and Yahoo.

“Optimizing for search” just means using the same keywords in your descriptions and titles that art buyers use when searching for artwork online.

Sounds easy, right? Well it is, sort of.

If you’re interested, I’ve written several more in-depth articles about search engine optimization in EmptyEasel’s SEO for Artists section. But for now, here’s a quick example of how to optimize your artwork for search engines:

(You’ll see that I’ve made the art-related keywords bold. None of the other words really help when it comes to searches.)

“Untitled Fragments is the seventh painting in my series of geometric abstract artworks. I used bold colors and powerful brush strokes, as I do in all my paintings, in order to create a lasting visual impression. Art buyers (and art lovers) will see symbolic references to prominent 20th century abstract painters like Piet Mondrian and Georges Braque as I offer homage to their artistic vision through my own art. This artwork is still for sale, so if you’d like to purchase the painting just click on the buy artwork button below.”

With a little effort you can make your descriptions chock full of words that art buyers might be searching for. In this case, they’re not just about abstract paintings but also about buying art, similar artists, and so on.

2. Be more social.
Depending on the art website you signed up with, your use of keywords in descriptions may help a lot or not at all. One thing that’s almost sure to bring in traffic, however, is social networking. Here are some of the best ways to network and sell your art.

Flickr - What can I say? There’s a lot of people browsing Flickr every day, and it has a great search function built right in. Sign up for a free account, put up some of your best artwork (properly tagged, of course) and place links to the website where your art is actually for sale. If you use Imagekind, I’d like to know how the whole Imagekind / Flickr partnership works out for you.

Myspace - It’s not just for kids anymore. You’ll have the ability to send out public bulletins to promote your artwork, customize your page, make or join art groups, and add many, many friends who will hopefully become fans of your art (and maybe even buyers). Yes, MySpace is kind of. . . scummy. . . sometimes, but it’s still growing strong and it would be foolish to not use it.

Facebook - Since you can now join Facebook based on location, I definitely see it becoming a great social networking site for local artists. Like MySpace you can create groups and add contacts, but you can also create events (art shows, perhaps?) and issue invitations with RSVP ability built in.

Plus, if you’d like to advertise your art to a very specific group of people, Facebook now let’s you do that. Check out this article on advertising your art with Facebook for more information.

YouTube - This might be a little tech-heavy for some artists, but just like Myspace it’s too big to ignore. If you have to, find a friend who posts videos regularly and enlist their help. Make a quick art demonstration or an artwork-in-progress video, and upload it to your own “channel.” Then just find a way to link directly from that page to your artwork.

Dani over at DaniDraws.com makes good use of YouTube. Take a look at her channel and then give it a shot yourself.

Forums - Any forum is great for networking, not just art forums. And while you’re there, always put a link to your artwork in the signature line of your posts. You might even consider joining some forums that have the same interests as you. Do you paint flowers? Join a botany forum. Horses? Find an equestrian group. If you plan on spamming people though, prepare to be banned. Only join forums that you’d enjoy whether you sold any art or not.

The thing to realize with social networking sites is that you have to be willing to spend time talking, commenting, and getting involved. If you can do that, you’ll start to see some results. If you have fun in the meantime, that’s even better.

3. Start an art blog.
There are so many blogging options these days it’s almost too easy. I’d suggest Wordpress.com if you don’t want to get your hands messy with all the hosting and other stuff, and it only takes a few seconds to get started. There are other programs available of course, but wordpress.com makes it really simple.

Andrew Gibson is one good example of an artist using a blog to drive traffic to his online gallery, and here are 8 more reasons why you should start an art blog too.

4. Create an email newsletter for art lovers.
Let people know they can get an email update whenever you finish another piece, and work on building long-term relationships with them through that periodic contact. If you’re already posting artwork on a blog it’s pretty easy to send emails automatically.

All it takes is putting the subscription box in a prominent place and making sure people feel comfortable with you. Over time you can build up a large group of repeat buyers.

I use Feedburner to send out an email every Sunday with information on upcoming articles. Check out my sign-up page to see just how simple it is for people to subscribe.

5. Advertise your art website (in print).
When you’re printing business cards, postcards, flyers, or anything else, include the main website address where people can find and buy your art.

Don’t be shy about promoting your website offline at all—in fact, it’s probably the surest way you can target your artwork to people that you know would want to buy your art.

6. Team up with other artists.
Find a few other artists and join forces. You could create a group blog or just commit to linking back and forth; either way everybody benefits.

The Daily Painters are a group of artists who did just that, and they seem to be doing all right. If you’re concerned about losing traffic to your partners, don’t be. The way the internet works, you can often multiply traffic with each new member, not just add a bit.

7. Stick to it for at least 6 months.
This whole process isn’t necessarily easy, but it will work over time. Don’t get disappointed in a week or a month when nothing seems to have changed. After six months, take a look back.

If you make up your mind to do even half of what I’ve suggested in this article, after six months you should definitely be seeing some improvements

12-5-08
See the outstanding work of:

****Fine Art America (search for) Diane Ziemski
http://www.fineartamerica.com

Small Works on Paper, Arkansas Arts Council, 2005 and 2006
and now 2009
http://www.aetn.org/smallworks/

MidSouthern Watercolorists
http://midsouthernwatercolorists.com/

The Saatchi Gallery, online, London England
http://www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/yourgallery/artist/details.p
hp?id=12235