Extraordinary Art Blog Series, Part Eight: Art Blogging is not the End of the Story

See the artblog’s art blog profile or visit the artblog.

I have been struck on a few occasions how well some art bloggers have been able to branch out into others areas, using their art blog to help them achieve other objectives – and often vice versa. There are a lot of great examples out there, but I have been lucky enough to grab some time with Libby Rosof and Roberta Fallon to explore this aspect further. Libby and Roberta produce the artblog, which has been successful at a number of levels, each of which are quite different.

For those of you who do not already know Roberta and Libby, they both studied English Literature before moving on to create art. In addition to writing on the artblog, their writing has appeared in a number of high profile publications – both online and in print. They have acted as jurors and curators, have had their art work shown in collective and solo exhibitions, have taught and lectured on art, and taken part in many public art acts – including a number of projects for the Zero .1% for Art Commission.

Peter Cowling (Art Connect)
So you moved to a shiny new website from March 2009, which makes the third by my count – the other two being artblog version 1, and the artblog version 2.

How long did you run that first blog before moving across to the second, blogspot based art blog?

Libby and Roberta
When we began in 2003 we were already using blogger software and ftp-ing the blog to our own website, so up til the recent wordpress transormation we’d always been with or on blogger.

Peter Cowling
Casting your mind back to April 2003, when you started the first art blog, what were your motivations at the time?

Libby and Roberta
We wanted to fill the gap between the coverage that was needed and what was out there. The newspapers were covering less and less art and we wanted to cover more art rather than less. And what the print media did cover was old hat, rear garde and we wanted to cover the youthquake that was happening here in Philadelphia.

Peter Cowling
I guess that leads us to an interesting aspect: the Zero .1% for Art Commission. Can you explain a little more about this programme?

Libby and Roberta
This is another gap we decided to close—the gap between the art world and real people. We created the tongue in cheek commission to bring art to the streets and to create discussion about what art was worth and what art actually was.

Peter Cowling
In that first period, how did your goals for the artblog evolve?

Libby and Roberta
It was always a goal to have an index—even before any of the blog software provided that possibility. We had a hand-fashioned index that didn’t work too well but it was a beginning of archiving and organizing what we were doing. As we began writing we realized we were creating an important chronicle of the burgeoning art scene in Philadelphia.

Early on we wanted to make podcasts or be on cable tv or make videos for the blog showing us as the Siskel and Ebert of art. We finally got to do this when David Kessler invited us to make videos with him. We’re forever grateful and in our usual fashion, we grabbed the opportunity at the moment it was presented to us…even though we’re not as videogenic as we used to be. We’re hoping our personalities carry us a long way. We hear people like the videos anyway.

Peter Cowling
I have always been struck by the optimism that you seem to imbue in the artblog. How does that work: is it an editorial decision to go with positive subject matter, or did you find yourselves naturally gravitating to this approach?

Libby and Roberta
We’re both optimists and utopian…but not naïve. We also are conscious cheerleaders for what’s good, in Philadelphia and everywhere. We did make a decision to go with the positive because there’s so much good and so little time to cover it. And we don’t like the negative energy that comes from whining and complaining. We’re negative by omission—we simply don’t cover the stuff we don’t like. Occasionally we do write something negative, especially when it’s a big name artist who’s resting on their laurels.

Peter Cowling
Was there a point or period when you thought looks like this our art blog is really going to work out for us.

Libby and Roberta
One month in we knew we had readers who loved what we were doing and we watched our numbers go up. We were enjoying doing the work and people were sending us emails and offering to contribute writings to the blog. From the beginning it was a goal to fund the blog via advertising instead of going the non-profit route. It took us a few years to realize that goal.

Peter Cowling
What would be your advice to people just starting out on their blog, in terms of getting themselves known to other bloggers and readers, and is there anything you can do to combine your online and real world efforts?

Libby and Roberta
New bloggers should link everywhere—to institutions, other blogs and websites. They should email those blogs and websites to let them know they’ve done this. Once they have a track record of putting up posts consistently they should ask the blogs and websites to link back to them. They should join Facebook and twitter and use all those online tools to help start a network. In the real world we are on the lecture circuit giving powerpoint lectures about contemporary art in Philadelphia and elsewhere. It’s just like what we do on the blog. We’ve also taught at local art schools as a result of the blog. And we keep in touch with many many artists, curators and other writers in the real world, seeing them at openings and other art events. We sometimes write on the blog about the real world things in our lives that are not necessarily about art (movie reviews, travel posts, family weddings and graduations). People love those glimpses of us as human beings.

Peter Cowling
You have always had a strong community feel to your blog. My perception is that this stems in part to your presence in the Philadelphia art scene. Is this aspect something you consciously focus on?

Libby and Roberta
Yes, we are both politically engaged and love our communities. One of our goals for the blog is to help the community cohere and to help others know about it. Philadelphia is a fabulous place ….often in the shadow of New York. We’ve created some buzz about Philadelphia that’s brought people here (we know the economy is at work here too but we’re taking some credit).

Peter Cowling
You also give quite a lot of attention to New York, which I guess is because it is such an important art scene. Looking back over the evolution of your blog, would you say that your geographical coverage has been emboldened by the success you have had.

Libby and Roberta
We’ve always gone boldly forth. We wrote about New York from the get go knowing that that’s where the big discussions were. That writing about New York and other important places helped to bring people from outside Philadelphia to the blog—like Raphael Rubenstein of Art in America, for example—who gave us a great shout out in 2005 in the magazine. From the beginning we’ve wanted to put Philadelphia in the context of the big shows—biennials, triennials, art fairs, museum shows, etc. Naturally we cover the big shows—wherever they are.

Peter Cowling
What other art blogs do you find inspiring today?

Libby and Roberta
Philadelphia: Zoe Strauss is the best. Rob Matthews, too. New York: Brent Burket, Joy Garnett. All of these people are nationally respected. They have prodigious output which we admire and they have something to say and say it well. Their blogs are reflections of the amazing human beings they are. However, mostly, art blogs don’t inspire us. Art inspires us. We see a lot of it and we think about it all the time.

Peter Cowling
Is there a difference between the art blogs that inspire you, and those that you read for fun?

Roberta
I adore boing boing for its gadgets and videos and unicorns. I like Culture Monster for gossip.

Libby
I like to read in the real world. Give me my newspapers.

Libby and Roberta
We both love the New Yorker cover to cover, although it’s impossible to keep up. We both love lectures by authors and artists and thinkers. That’s fun for us.

Peter Cowling
I see you use Twitter on the artblog now, how is that working out for you?

Libby and Roberta
It’s good. We only use it to promote our posts and not for what we eat for lunch (although we do have wonderful lunches on Mondays and Tuesdays when we work together!).

Peter Cowling
I had a good chat with Jessica Palmer, from Bioephemera, about what the future might hold for art blogs. (See It Is Not Really Bloggers vs Journalists You Know.) Do you have any specific hopes for how things might pan out?

Libby and Roberta
We don’t have a crystal ball but we think the internet has been a terrific boon for niche publications like ours. Without the internet we never could have produced a publication that’s read by people around the world. We expect this publication to continue and grow because of the internet. Once Kindle or other digital readers become ubiquitous like the iPod we forsee that the better blogs, like ours, will be available in that format. It’s a format for reading, better than the computer screen. And we’re a blog of frequent long posts that might lend themselves to Kindle-ization.

Peter Cowling
And what does the future hold for the artblog? Are the any particular ambitions you would like to fulfil through your art blog?

Libby and Roberta
We’d like to be a bookmark on every person’s browser. We’re hoping we’re half way there. We would love for this publication to get picked up by a library to preserve the archive of contemporary art that it represents. A future scholar will delve right in and produce the art history book this revolutionary era needs.