I will be writing my third novel during NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month).
This time around, my goal is to get an entire draft written during November. Although I intend to start writing at 12:01 AM, I have scheduled a Write-In at the Kitchener Public Library downtown branch for 6:00 – 9:00 PM, November 1st, 2012 See Map
Currently I’m working out what the novel will actually be; all I can say just now is that it will delve into the area of identity theft.
My intent was always to make my work available here, but I have not yet evaluated alternatives to PayPal, which I will not use. [Admittedly, reading legalese makes my brain glaze over…]
This state of affairs has now changed, as Libreleft Books will now be adding Kobo to our list of publishing outlets.
So I am pleased to announce that Inconstant Moon is now available in ePub format through Kobo!
I’m sorry, I am not personally acquainted with Jack Kingston or his family. Many of Mr. Kingston’s recordings were included on the British Archive CD issue. You can find the Jack Kingston BACM listing here.
Other than that, you might want to consider checking out vinyl record shows, which are held throughout the year in various venues. I believe there is one upcoming in Toronto this weekend.
Although art competitions ostensibly exist to benefit the artists, the contest holder is always the chief beneficiary, as shown by a local hardware store’s mural contest a few years back.
Murals
The Victor Clothing Company’s Anthony Quinn mural in Los Angeles was quite impressive when I saw it years ago. Since then, murals have come into vogue in Southern Ontario.
A competition was announced: five local artists were selected to design and create their own original 6′ x 6′ murals on the blank wall facing the Elmira Home Hardware Store parking lot.
The way the contest worked, interested folks could vote for their favourites, but voters had to pay for their ballot. In this way, the Home Hardware campaign “raised about $2,500”.
California’s Victor Clothing Company commissioned artists to create the now famous murals.
In comparison, Home Hardware got a wall full of free murals, a reputation both for “supporting local artists” and for providing the community with public art, a charitable donation, and all the accompanying publicity.
The community got some nice public art which remains in reasonably good condition almost seven years later.
And the artists?
They had to undergo a selection process, then conceive an idea, plan out the design, and then actually paint the thing.
Trevor Martin’s winning mural paid him $500; not a terrible return for work he estimates took about 24 hours.
The other four artists each received $100. If it took them each ten hours to paint their murals, they may just about have managed to earn minimum wage. My guess is that each mural took well over ten hours to paint, so except for the winner, none of the artists are likely to have even earned minimum wage.
Pretty good deal, right?
The rest of the money raised was donated to charity.
An argument is usually made that the artists get exposure from a contest like this. In some cases it can be valuable, but artists still need to eat. Plumbers need exposure, too, yet I can’t recall anyone suggesting that they should donate their work for it. Perhaps in future supporting local artists might mean paying them a reasonable amount for their work.
But even if exposure is an important consideration, is a contest like this one the right kind of exposure? Particularly when there is a “winner”, well, we all know what the word for a non-winner is. Does that kind of exposure really help an artist’s career? And who are the judges?
online
These days you can find all manner of art “contests” online. The artist is generally required to herd their family, friends and fans to the contest venue to get them to vote. Most of the ones I’ve seen don’t require a simple voting, but repetitive voting over time. And before people can vote, they have to register, and give up a lot of personal information. (Guess where SPAM comes from…) So again, the voters pay the price. Do you really want to do this to your fan base?
So I have yet to wonder about any net benefit to the artist. Although a contest dangles a prize, is that prize worth the price you have to pay for it?
know what you’re getting into
Before even creating a contest entry, let alone posting your work, always read the contest rules. Any contest submission will necessarily transfer or sharing at least some of the artist’s rights to their own work to the contest holder. [As does posting your work to any website that you yourself don’t control.] Be very sure that you know what you are agreeing to. And that you can live with it. For artists, the main advantage to the proliferation of art contests is that there is always another contest.
Because, after all, the main beneficiary of any contest is always the contest holder. After all, they get to make the rules.
When I was a child I didn’t much like downtown Waterloo because of the pervasive smell of the Seagram’s Distillery that hung over the city core.
Those days are long past, as manufacturing that decreases the quality of life is better relegated to more isolated locales. Waterloo today enjoys the reputation of being one of Ontario’s more livable cities.
The Seagram industrial complex was remade into upscale loft housing some years back.
Originally there was an enormous pyramid of old barrels out front, making a wonderful historic bit of historic public art, but that has now been replaced by the more sedate “Barrel Warehouse Park”.
These days the park is graced by public art consisting of a few gigantic bits of miscellaneous machinery that presumably were once employed in the distillery business.
There is also an odd little man-made waterfall cascading out of a featureless concrete wall…
… to the floor of a sloped concrete enclosure. Presumably the puddle at the bottom is intended as a wading pool for local children.
But it is the ranks of identical windows flanked on one side by identical blue shutters that provides the real art to this architectural gentrification project.
Certainly, and you don’t even need to ask, as the license info is in the sidebar. This blog is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License . . . which means the only restriction is that you can’t license it with greater restriction, you couldn’t add “No Derivatives” or “Non Commercial” or even “Copyright All Rights Reserved.”
However, even if your blog/webpage is itself published under a more restrictive licence, you can still use my work as long as you use the same or similar license as the one I’m using on the page on which you use it.
Do you mind if I quote a couple of your posts as long as I provide credit and sources back to your site? My blog is in the exact same area of interest as yours and my visitors would truly benefit from some of the information you provide here. Please let me know if this ok with you. Thanks!
