A while
back I began to realize that if I was really going to get my art stuff out there
I had to do something more than the obvious. I had to plunge into the deep
waters of the Internet.
Already this year I have sent out 1000 postcards for Open
Studios, a stack more advertising art festivals and classes, occasional flyers
listing current shows I'm in, and two newsletters.
Altogether this has cost me hundreds of dollars (I'm in denial as to how
many hundreds) for paper, printing, and postage - not to mention several
expensive cartridges of ink for my printer.
True, it has led to more sales but whether or not it is profitable I'm
not so sure.
Like many artists, I often
forget that my time, too, is costly. Writing
a newsletter, even with the help of clever
desktop publishing software (I use
Microsoft Publisher), is very time-consuming.
Then there are the countless hours spent stapling, and sticking on
mailing labels and stamps - leading to the onset of carpel tunnel syndrome and
backache, not to mention a tendency to mutter at one's spouse for not helping
and requiring food at regular intervals! Not
the least problem with mailing out 1200 newsletters is trying to find mailboxes
with enough room to accommodate them. I know, I know - I should have taken them
to the post office, but the lines are always so long and, besides, I had 4
shopping bags of the things. It's
funny how guilty you feel stuffing two or three hundred items into your
neighborhood mailbox. I found myself acting furtively, waiting for quiet moments
after dark when the locals wouldn't witness my excesses. Or I would use a
mailbox several miles away where nobody knew me.
The idea of building my own
website had been growing for some time. But
fear got in the way. Although not a novice where computers are concerned (I was
fortunate in being sent on a course to learn the mysteries of programming in the
late 70's), HTML was one foreign language I felt I could do without. Then again,
I teach middle-schoolers who were born with keyboards attached to their fingers.
A lot of them already have websites. In
the past two years I've adopted computerspeak in the classroom to increase my
credibility with the kids. "What's
your URL?" they began asking. In
the days before I became a computer nerd I
used to think URL was a disease of the bladder.
I assured my students that my website was "in progress".
By this they assumed that it would be pretty sensational when it was
finally published, so this put me under pressure right away.
The final push to get on with it
came from a friend's excited phone call one day last year, telling me that she
had just got her own website. I
admit I was jealous. Lindsay and I
have always enjoyed a friendly rivalry in the publicity field, so I couldn't let
this pass. I bought HTML for Dummies. Unfortunately, at about this time I was
also trying to learn Spanish for my upcoming workshop in Mexico. Then, while
browsing through a discount warehouse I came across Print Shop Deluxe, a desktop
publishing suite which includes a website
designer. No HTML required. With a
large rebate, it cost me all of $9-95. I was on my way.
What fun I had creating fancy
headlines with WordArt, inserting graphics, choosing a background from dozens of
'wallpapers', making, importing images of my paintings and re-sizing them
to fit the page, and, of course, writing text.
Having already mastered the technique of scanning photographs of my art
and enhancing them with Microsoft Picture It! (user-friendly in
the extreme, with apologies to the Bill Gates Hate Mob), and having always
enjoyed writing, there really wasn't much to it.
I'm exaggerating. It took
approximately 60 hours to create 21 interlinked pages …and a lot of patience
on the part of my spouse who had to listen to my agony and ecstasy while trying
to work on his own computer.
The next step was publishing to
the World Wide Web. For this you
have to be already signed up with an Internet Service Provider (ISP). I soon
realized that the lengthy website address they would give me was far from
memorable. Greedily I lusted after my own domain name. You know, like
www.famousartist.com. My ISP wanted
$39-95 per month for that, whereas squatting on their address cost me nothing
and they gave me a large space (40 Megabytes).
Leafing through the pages of PC World I read of a company (www.mydomain.com)
which lets you choose your own domain name, then redirects visitors who type it
to the real site with the unmanageable address.
At no cost! Nada.
First you have to reserve a name, which is a bit like applying for a
personal license plate for your car. But
I got lucky: www.annsartpage.com
was available! You have to pay $70 to register the name for the first 2 years
and $35 per year thereafter, but that's all.
So I finally got my website
'uploaded', as they say in cyberspace, with its own fancy address. My aim is
that it should become interactive, but for that I've had to purchase Frontpage
2000, another Bill Gates product. I'll be updating it regularly with news about
shows, classes, and hopefully stuff about the local art organizations I belong
to. I might even have a few guest
artists. The World Wide Web is my oyster!
Of course, this is not the end of the story. I have since had to publicize the website by - you guessed it - sending out hundreds of newsletters, emails, updating all my business cards and stationery, and … writing this article!
©Ann Baldwin
November '99