The Economic impact of artists in America

The National Endowment for the Arts released a report yesterday on the economic impact of artists. It counted all those folks it defines as artists -- actors, announcers, architects....photographers, producers, writers -- and found that "more Americans identify their primary occupation as artist than as lawyer, doctor, police officer or farm worker." That is nearly 2 million artists generating $70 billion in income. For a good summary see this NYT article and the full report at the NEA site

You can come by the show tomorrow night and add a few shekels to the $70 billion in income! I guess that means I'd have to report the income though......

The exhibit looks good....

...if I say so myself.

The room works well for a public use space not designed for art. We have about the right number of pieces to fill it up without looking crowded. I'm hoping that everyone enjoys the show and the camaraderie. Here are a few photos. A couple of mine...



And some of Karen's...



And finally I might have a few t-shirts that I make using black tees and bleach. Like this one...

Here I'm going to test the Zemanta blog system

Image via WikipediaSuppose I was writing a blogpost about Jules Olitski. Would Zemanta find materials -- links, photos, reviews -- that were relevant to what I was writing? So I start typing.....

"Olitski was an abstract expressionist/color field painter. I recently saw some of his work at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art. He impressed me the most but I was also thrilled with Helen Frankenthaler, and Morris Louis (painting to the right) amongst others. Their juxtaposition with the AbEx crowd like Rothko, Hoffman and Motherwell worked well. I'm still amazed what the Color Field painters could do with thin coats of acrylics. Blah, blah, blah....."

I'm also pretty amazed at what this Zemanta was able to do! (For example adding the link to the official Olitski site.) On the other hand it didn't find any photos of Olitski's paintings nor the recent NYT article including his daughter Eve, but it did a remarkable job of following the gist of this post.

The show is now up

Karen and I hung the show this Saturday and I think it looks good. Come by this Friday 6-9 for ArtWalk if you can but the show is up through July.

Here's a new one of Karen's that is in the show.

After Olitski. Acrylics on canvas. 24 x 30

My pieces in the upcoming show

You can take a look at the pieces that (probably) will be in the upcoming show. I reserve the right to swap out a couple but most likely a subset of these 16 will be there.

Oh and here's a brand new one....

Blue Steer. Acrylics and salt on canvas. 18 x 24