Fluid Thinking – Update on Karen D’Amico’s Artist Blog

This is a cross post from my Portals and KM blog. Karen D’Amico, an artist working in London, has started a blog to talk about her art and other stuff. Karen is an old friend and I wrote about her blog a few years ago. This post is a significantly updated version of her blog story as it continues in fine form. The blog is called Fluid Thinking: “a sideways glance at my life as an artist: facetious observations on making art punctuated occasionally by Serious Reflection and perhaps the odd rant.” Karen has a web site that she has maintained for some time which does an excellent job of displaying her art. Her art practice focuses on ways of connecting and interpreting notions surrounding identity/legacy, accumulated histories, and sense of place.

Karen wrote in her first post, beginning blog…, “I've decided to start a blog in order to compile an ongoing diary of thoughts and observations in relation to my art practice, with the odd rant or random thought thrown in. I've kept written diaries and sketchbooks on and off for years, mainly as a means of exploring ideas and possibilities when making work. For me the interesting bit has always been the slow realisation that certain ideas continue to reoccur over time, though sometimes in different formats, and I've found this to be a useful compass. So it seemed logical for the next step to be a blog - a place where ideas can unfold and at the same time, have information chronological and easily accessible for future reference.”

Karen began the blog on 14th Feb 2005 for a few reasons. In general terms, she needed to provide a more formal structure for documenting the process of making work. It’s such a myth that art is ‘made in a moment of inspiration!’ Usually it is hard work, like anything else, and requires a lot of thought, planning and experimentation, all of which takes time. So in order to minimize some of that time, a blog is a great device. Karen feels another prevalent myth is that artists are ‘airy-fairy-in-the-clouds’ people who lack organizational skills. This is laughable, really, because most artists, though perhaps lacking in admin skills, are actually pretty obsessive-compulsive people. She said “give artists a structure or set of criteria to be obsessive about and they can do it to the nth degree in terms of making work.”

Personally, Karen finds it entirely too easy to be un-self disciplined in terms of writing about or documenting her work and ideas and when that happens, ideas tend to slip away and not get explored. She said, “suddenly one day you wake up and see your idea or something very similar to it in a gallery somewhere and the realization quickly arrives that it’s your own lack of planning and organization that prevents you from carrying the idea out.”

Karen has kept sketchbooks for years and they’ve always been a great tool for navigating the work, but she felt a need to make a stronger commitment. With a sketchbook or written journal, there’s the feeling that it’s private, not for public consumption. That’s great in terms of feeling free to explore even the wildest ideas, but it also prevents ideas from becoming reality because there is the safety of not being accountable. So she thought it was time to be accountable for her ideas. Not to say that she doesn’t use other strategies as well, just that she needed to take them a step further.

Karen also wanted to be able to consolidate her ideas and evolving projects with useful information that she could easily access later. This is where sketchbooks can be a pain because you end up having so many and they eventually begin to collect dust in a box somewhere instead of being live documents. So in practical terms, she wanted a central place to put all the relevant information that becomes important to a project in terms of research, vendors, materials, techniques and so on, as well as showing in real terms how the ideas evolve, how connections are made from one thought process to another, and how a piece of work unfolds. She describes it as a sort of ‘verbal’ flowchart or diagram.

Additionally, the ‘Links’ section has become an invaluable resource for both Karen and her readers. Karen’s blogroll is lengthly, and includes links to artists, galleries, arts-related publications and resources, as well as non arts-related information, all of which is broken down into categories for easier navigation. Because the links reside within the blog itself, she and her readers have the ability to tap into those resources from anywhere in the world. As she says, ‘Gone are the days of stressing over losing all my bookmarks.”

Another reason was, very simply, hope for more exposure. Karen said that even in the best of times it’s hard getting your stuff out there and seen, especially in a city like London. There is a lot of competition, as well as a lot of talented people out there, so she felt she needed to explore lots of different avenues with regard to getting her work out there. While her website can be a great means of exposure, the drawback is that it lays dormant for long periods. So a blog seemed like the logical next step – a presence on the web that can be updated easily as well as at any time and with a blog Karen can get the information out there easily and quickly.

Lastly, she likes to write, and she wanted to find a way to incorporate that into her practice in a more concrete way.

The blog has definitely met her original objectives. She is able to look back on her archives and recognise connections within her work, some of which have evolved over time and others which run consistently through her practice, and there’s a real comfort in knowing that all that information is in one place. The exposure has proven to be a fruitful means of connection and communication, and far reaching at that. The ability to dissolve the gap of geographical proximity has meant that she has developed relationships with artists and arts-related organizations all over the world, which have provided opportunities to be involved in projects such as Denmark-based Travellers Secret Box Project and Australia-based Runway Magazine.

Karen’s blog also became the springboard for launching her art zine, Tangent and the connections she made through other blogs and sites became a valuable resource for sourcing artists and arts-related material to feature in the zine.

Since Karen has started her blog, it’s become much more useful than she realized. In the beginning it was like dipping a toe in the water – very typical artist – ‘Look at me! No! – Don’t look at me!’ Karen said that all artists want to be seen and acknowledged yet in actuality most artists are fairly shy – “otherwise we’d be rock stars instead of artists.” So in the beginning it was nervewracking for her, thinking someone might actually read it, other than friends, of course. Putting stuff out on the web for anyone to see is a bit scary, but it’s also forced her to really consider and clarify her ideas, as well as attempt to articulate them coherently. That has huge benefits, personally as well as professionally.

Additionally, Karen has seen the power of ‘the link’, which has opened up many possibilities for her regarding accessing information, as well as seeing a sort of ‘map’ of how her mind is working in regards to the connections she makes as she put together a post.

The biggest challenge Karen has faced is “anything involving << >> !! I am so un-tekkie. I’ve used a Mac ever since they came out and have had one since the days of the Mac Plus so I’m very comfortable with computers but not in terms of HTML.” The technical aspects of blogging is not something that interests her in the slightest and therefore she must force herself to learn how to use the tool more effectively. She feels pretty good that she has managed fairly quickly to figure out how to do links and pictures but she also knows there’s a lot she needs to learn in order to get the most out of the blog as a tool. For example, she doesn’t understand the ‘track back’ and ‘syndication’ stuff yet and she can see it’s important. Karen also needs to figure out how to fiddle around with the layout. The visual bit is important to her and she hasn't gotten this figured out yet, other than to use existing templates.

The other big challenge is to find a balance between creating a document for her own reference purposes and something that is interesting to read. Also to be succinct – no one wants to read pages and pages of someone bla, bla, bla-ing, no matter how interesting it seems to the writer at the time of writing, and she struggles with her own verbosity. Karen finds that her partner is a good barometer – he isn’t an artist so isn’t really interested in art stuff per se’, but when he reads it (and he always spots the typos) and starts to get bored Karen knows she needs to edit.

And lastly, there is the challenge of tearing herself away – it’s the typical thing: new toy, wanna play with it all the time. It drives her partner nuts.

As far as overcoming the tekkie stuff goes, she is doing as much reading and research as she can stand, but she doesn’t do it all at once. Karen knows herself well enough to know that she has a very low threshold for ‘technise’ so she tries to learn this in manageable chunks. But Karen finds the immediacy of the reward once she figures stuff out is a great incentive – for instance, when she figured out how to do the links it was just amazing to comprehend that she really could have all this information in one place, for her (or anyone else) to easily access in the future. That’s powerful.

Karen’s major source of content is self-generated, the evolution of her ideas. She uses Google a lot as well, because it gets her information quickly and easily and their image sourcing is great. She also accesses other artist blogs, and that has been interesting, though it surprises her how little this tool has been utilised in the art world, especially here in the UK, until very recently.

Karen hopes that people will want to read her blog to see how ideas unfold and connections are made in terms of the thought processes while making art, or if someone is interested in her work, to find out about her and how she thinks. Or to be amused here and there.

Karen finds other blogs a great source of information as well as living lessons in what to do and what not to do when writing one.

Karen’s bloglist has grown considerably over the past 3 years. Here are a few favorites with her comments:

Absent Without Leave An artist based in Brighton, Ivan Pope was one of the first artists to have used blogs in direct connection with his art practice, and his was one of the first artist blogs I discovered. As he says in a recent post, “When I started blogging there were very few artist blogs. I started the blog because I thought the voice of the artist was rarely heard. I still think that is true.” Ivan Pope also invented the internet café at the ICA back in the ‘90’s.

NewsGrist ‘Where Spin is Art’ Edited by New York artist Joy Garnett, NewsGrist began 8 years ago as an e-zine devoted to the politics of art and culture in the digital age. Having morphed into a blog four years ago, it remains a diverse collection of art news, politics and activism. Joy and her contributing editors have their fingers firmly on the pulse of the NY artworld and beyond and the combination of good writing, interesting subject matter and great links, always makes it worth a read.

Russell Herron London based artist Russell Herron started his blog with the express purpose of making a record of what was happening in the London Art Scene over the space of a one year period. Sadly, that year has come and gone, but the archives can still be read, and are a real kick. During its heyday it was a Must Read for anyone connected with the London Art Scene and is missed by many.

Things Magazine Originally founded in 1994 by a group of writers and historians based at the Victoria & Albert Museum/Royal College of Art “in the belief that objects can open up new ways of understanding the world”, their accompanying weblog is a compendium of links, images and comments about just about anything you can think of.

Karen has the following advice to have for others thinking about starting a blog:
- Read the instructions carefully when you start your blog.
- Once you start posting, ALWAYS check your links to make sure they work!
- Always do a spellcheck and if you can, have someone proof it before you post.
- Be succinct – easier said than done, I know.
- Have interesting content.

Comments

[Lana]

I'll have to check these out...

[Mick Mather]

Karen has a terrific blog. She and Ivan Pope were the two major influences for me when I first began blogging. Thanks for this update, Bill.