In one camp there is the group touting I’m an artist, “I don’t make content. Content is what you read in magazines or on social media…” In the other camp you have, “The world has changed you might be making art, but the art is just part of the content you are posting…”

“Calamity Jane’s Not So Hollow Revenge” Archival Pigment Print on Red River Palo Duro Etching. 13x19 Sheet 11x14 image. Edition of five. 2026

Which got me to thinking about how I classify myself and does it really make any difference. I would classify myself as a visual artist before I would call myself a content creator. The art comes first and the occasional posts are here to support the art or help explain it. Not promote it. Not fill the doom scrolling with something interesting enough to get someone to read for a few seconds before moving on to more scrolling.

If you do a search on Content Creator vs Artist you’ll get quite a few opinions on the matter. All of varying degrees of expert opinion being offered up by anyone and everyone. So I’m not going to offer up an opinion of my own and claim it as the gold standard definition of one vs the other.

In today’s world it’s not that simple.

I will say this is where I personally stand on the issue. Content Creator always has felt to me like the term Influencer. Something that wasn’t invented by, but latched onto by some very savvy marketing firms as social media began to dominate the internet. It is a phrase that can be applied easily to the job title of someone that might have been called a copywriter or editorialist 30 years ago. And the purpose of content creation has always felt like a need to feed the beast so to say.

That beast being the hungry audience with an insatiable appetite for more and more “content”. The content doesn’t necessarily need to make you think or feel deeply, it simply needs to exist and possibly promote something. In most cases hollow information that may have influence or sway over a specific audience in order to get likes, comments, follows, shares, etc.

When I create artwork, I don’t care about any of that. I care that if someone sees the work they have some sort of response to it. Whether that response is good or bad. Hot or cold. Visceral, emotional, confused, angry, questioning and on and on. I’m not making artwork for likes, comments, follows, shares, etc. I’m making it because I have a vision of something and I need to create it. To get it out of my head and into the real world.

When I share artwork its not about likes, comments, follows, shares, etc. It’s about the fact that in 2026 if you don’t post work on social media and anywhere else online your work may never be seen and that is part of the point of making the artwork isn’t it. In my case I wouldn’t make it if I didn’t want to be seen by someone somewhere. I suppose you could be like the brilliant photographer Vivian Maier who never showed her work to anyone and was discovered and recognized after her death. And I’m know there are plenty of other Vivian Maier’s out in the world that will be discovered long after they are gone.

So in the case of myself, I suppose I would say I’m an artist that occasionally creates content, but not a content creator in the most widely used definition of the word. If you happen to follow any of my other social media accounts you’ll notice that for every artwork related post, there are probably two or three posts about things not artwork related, but also not “content creation”.

So where do I stand on all of this. Basically it’s 2026, you do you and I’ll keep doing what I’m doing without trying to put people in boxes. I’m in no position too and besides I have some artwork I need to get back to. And yes, you could say this is considered “Content”.

“Kung Fu Tussle” 24x36 Mixed media on wood panel. 2026 Signed and titled on reverse.

A week ago, a rather large and powerful thunderstorm ripped through the metro, and as it did, it took out a large birch tree in my yard, along with my power and the fiber line for my internet. This was on a Saturday evening, and even though I called the damage in right away, I knew I was essentially offline until sometime on Monday.

Instead of Monday, it was late Wednesday before we got the internet connection reinstalled and everything up and running again. So, I was offline for essentially four and a half days. I had my iPhone so I could connect via my cell signal to check email, social media, and a bit of browsing, but I don’t have a huge data plan, so I tried to keep it to a minimum.

Even though I didn’t have an internet connection, I did try to use some of the software that a large portion of my art practice relies on these days, and while I could launch the apps, I couldn’t save anything. Every single piece of software that I use needs to phone home to the developer in order to function properly. That’s right, every single piece. So it put me in a situation where I really started to think about not only how I work, but how dependent we all have become on being connected to the internet or having access to it for some of our most basic functions.

For four days, I spent all of my studio time working on projects that are being made with traditional tools, and as I worked, I thought about how I used to work just a couple of decades ago. Could I produce the same kind of work that I make today using only the tools I had in, say, 1990?

The short answer is yes. The long answer is a bit more complex. Most of my work on paper and even some of the paintings are produced by building layer upon layer of composited imagery that is output and printed with a large format printer. Those pieces are then worked using traditional tools and finished either by mounting them to wood panels or another rigid substrate. I could do the entire process using traditional methods, but the time it would take is much longer, and the results wouldn’t really be the same.

I could, in fact, use traditional printing techniques like photo plate lithography or serigraphy to get a similar look. Both, however, would take days or weeks to produce. My digital files are often 100 to 200 layers deep, so if I were using photo litho plates, that would mean 100 to 200 plates, passes on the press, drying time between each ink pass, hand registration for each color pass, plus exposing and developing time for each plate. That’s a lot. The same thing would apply to serigraphs or intaglio methods as well.

None of that is bad, but it is time consuming and requires quite a bit of large and expensive equipment, not to mention all of the chemicals used in the etching processes. So, here I am working with digital equipment to get a specific look for my work. Digital equipment that requires an internet connection for the most part, which brings me back to I could open the software, but I couldn’t save anything I made or changed while offline.

That got me to thinking about process. What if I were required to create a piece, then since I couldn’t save it, I would either have to print it right then or discard it. The possibility of impermanence or the singularity of the piece being determined at the point of creation. This is something that actually plays into my current process. When I print a digital file, the source image gets flattened, reduced in size, and saved as nothing more than an archive of the work. If the piece is worked post printing, that gets photographed for archival purposes, and the digital file is struck (deleted) rending the photographed piece a true 1 of 1 original.

The only difference between working without an internet connection and with one is that I would have to print the file right away since my printers are hard wired to my computer. No waiting to archive the file later. Simply finish, print, close, and done.

It’s got me thinking, especially after taking a four-day mini vacation from the internet.

OK, enough of the art talk because there is another part to all of this. Four days with no internet led to a number of things. I went to the library and checked out a bunch of DVDs to watch since my TV was offline, and yes, I have a DVD player. I bout a new one about six months ago to play my CD collection after dropping my Apple Music subscription. I also checked out a number of books. Nothing new here; I hit the library weekly for books and research material. I spent more time with my cameras, sketching, using traditional tools, and kind of did a reset back to the days before our dependency on the internet, cell phones, and social media became so prevalent and addictive.

I like how it made me feel, and I need to do much more of it.

When I finally did get my internet connection back, I decided to upgrade my mesh network with a new set of nodes, and I discovered in the process that the following items were all using the network to phone home to their manufacturer. My fridge, washer, dryer, garage door opener, TV, speakers, a number of light bulbs, a handful of electrical outlets, my EV charger, and a portable fan.

Suffice to say, all of those items are now offline. I opted out of reconnecting every “Smart” appliance in my house. I’m not a modern-day Luddite, but I’m starting to feel better about being less connected to the virtual world and more connected to the real world. It’s something I need to embrace more, not only with my art practice but life in general. I’m done with subscriptions and the “always connected” nature of things.

This all started over a couple of cups of coffee, with three of my artist friends talking about the visual artists throughout history who have been forgotten or never really discovered. What happens to their work? Landfill? Thrift store? Some obscure relative’s house that has no real connection to the source and eventually landfill or thrift store? Or maybe one of a million other things that happens when a visual artist is no longer with us, or stops producing work.

This conversation stemmed from a couple of topics I brought up. The first being, since we all live in the same area, does anyone know who made this piece of public art that sits about a block from my house? The second, a bit more grim but just as relevant: Has anyone talked with Sarah about what will happen to Anthony’s unsold artwork after he’s gone in a few months to a year?

The first and second question are related to each other, but the second question is what really got the conversation going.

The answer to question one was “No” to who made the work, but with a bit of background. My neighbor Tom, who’s lived in the hood for decades, said he didn’t know who the sculptor was that made it, but he did know it was donated to the city by his wife sometime around 1980 after the artist had died. He lived in the neighborhood, and it was a gift to the city and has been in its current location for forty plus years.

The answer to question two was also “No”. None of us knew what was going to happen to any of Anthony’s remaining artwork, and none of us had spoken to his wife or kids about it. We also didn’t know how much of his work was currently being held by galleries or stores that might not ever get returned to the estate after his death. And this question, this topic led us down a path that none of us had really thought about in terms of our own work.

I have a flat file in my studio with over 300 works on paper. I also have a storage rack with probably 100 paintings in various sizes. Countless sketchbooks filled with drawings, notes, and ephemera. A handful of sculptures, various failed experiments with different materials looking to be resolved. More digital files than I care to think about, and smatterings of other artifacts that will at some point in the next 30 or so years be left behind when I’ve blasted off for the astral plane of post-physical existence.

Of course this got me to thinking about all sorts of stuff, but the one thing that got all of us to talking was the what if scenarios. What if an archaeologist found a piece of our work 2000 years into the future? (Provided we haven’t gone extinct by then) A piece with no description, no history, just an artifact? How would they decipher it? Would they relate it to a specific school? Could they tie it to a movement? Would it simply be discarded and ignored as nothing more than a visual triviality? What are the chances of any of our work even surviving for 2000 years, or for that matter 50 years after we’re no longer here?

All three of us work on paper, canvas, wood panels or some other substrate that isn’t designed for extreme longevity. In my case, that has been part of the appeal. The transient nature of work on paper. Unless it’s well cared for, it has a life expectancy like everything living thing on the planet. It’s just one of the qualities that has been a reason for working on it. Less so with cradled wood panels or stretched canvas, although both will eventually turn to dust if they aren’t properly cared for.

This is where we drifted as the conversation rolled on over cold Americanos and the remnants of cappuccinos drying at the bottom of a mug.

Think about all the visual artists that have come before, and are yet to arrive. Now, how many famous artists can you name, and how many artists have you never heard of? In art history classes, we are all taught about the heavier hitters. The Picasso’s, the DaVinci’s, the Cassat’s, the men and women that make up the pantheon of the visual arts world. A handful of people, when you think about the number of people making artwork now, and in the past. For every Jackson Pollock, there are thousands of unknowns toiling away on a labor of love, secretly hoping to get discovered and probably resigned to the fact that they might not.

Here’s a personal example of this. One that I have firsthand knowledge of. How many of you reading this have heard of the artist Glenn Gant? I’m going to say maybe, just maybe one or two of you. Gant was a friend of my family and a frequent guest to our house when he visited from his adopted home of Eureka Springs, Arkansas. He was a regionalist painter who studied with Thomas Hart Benton, Diego Rivera, and David Alfaro Siqueros (The this name is also someone not so familiar, I’m betting).

Gant’s work is held in a number of world class museums and in private collections, but like a million other artists that came before him and after him, he’s essentially unknown to most people. Even those who study art history and are avid collectors. He’s definitely not a name that comes up in most conversations when people are talking about regionalist painters from the 1950s through the 90s.

At this point, you are probably saying to yourself, “cut to the chase already,” so let me get to where our collective headspace ended up. Part of our conversation turned to how social media and the internet have produced a false sense that every artist can and will become rich and famous. That every artwork is great and needs to be displayed, collected, documented, archived, and protected.

How there is an assumption or expectation of fame and fortune that seems much more pervasive in the arts these days. Something that often seems to overshadow the point of making what you make in the first place, and how do we learn to let go of that? To be OK with the idea that the artwork you make today might be forgotten in the blink of an eye. Or, how what you are making today might get discovered completely out of context years from now. That is the thing that has stuck with me for the last week or so. The idea that my artwork might be found by someone years from now and how it might be perceived and deciphered. How it will be taken out of context and without documented history, because let’s be honest, I’m not going to become a famous artist in my lifetime, and I’m OK with that. I learned a long time ago that it was never about fame and fortune; it was simply about the act of doing and seeing what got made.

I’m not going to show the work here, because there is still a dispute under way with the estate that holds the rights to the original illustration, but his is the basic premise; the artists didn’t change the original source material enough to make it something new and original. Think of it in the same vein that the Turtles used when they sued De La Soul in 1991 for using an uncleared 12 second sample of “You Showed Me” in their 1989 release of “Transmitting Live from Mars”.

In my friends case the complaint simply accuses him of not giving any attribution to the original illustrator that he used in the work. This is where things get a bit sticky, especially in today’s world where there are millions of images available online, many of which are sourced without attribution and reused in different types of work.

The lack of attribution is becoming more and more of a hot topic especially now that AI models are being trained on anything and everything regardless of copyright.

In my friends case, the estate is claiming that he needed to alter the image by at least fifty percent in order to remove any need to attribute the original artist name. Because he didn’t they are wanting him to add to his documentation of the work that the original illustrator created the basis or body of the work and that his piece is simply a derivative work from the original.

My friend on the other hand is arguing that because the sampled work was originally created for commercial consumption and is over fifty years old it falls outside of any copyright protection and he shouldn’t be required to provide attribution for the original illustrator that created the source painting he used.

I’m not a legal expert, but I do remember what some of my art school professors told us. If you are appropriating a source that wasn’t created by your hand, and you know who created the original work, you need to include that information in your certificate of authenticity or any documentation you produce for the work.

The image above is mine, from sometime around 2015. I was working with a number of images on a series of collages that used photographs from the Mercury missions taken by NASA photographers in the early 1960s. They also used found illustration work and photographs taken by photographers hired by the WPA in the 1930s and 40s.

In my pieces, I gave attribution to the original photographers and illustrators when I could find who they were. The NASA and WPA photos were pretty easy, a quick image search provided plenty of information. Some of the illustrations used, not so much, and in those cases I simply put down “Illustration by unknown artist” with a reference to the section of the work.

The image below is a digital collage I found on the internet. There is no attribution or mention of the sources, but both sets of figures are by artist Al Parker from sometime between 1950 and probably 1965. A quick search gave me the name of the artist and who the work was created for “Cosmopolitan” and “Harper’s Bazaar”.

I’m not passing judgement or calling anyone out. I’m simply looking at this and trying to understand both sides of the argument about appropriating another artist work to create a new derivative piece, and at what point is attribution no longer required. Especially as AI generated images advance and proliferate the universe as we know it.

Because right now there are a number of law suits that are ongoing making this very argument about AI work that is a direct lift from another artist, illustrator, photographers work. Which got the group of us to start asking the question if you can sue a company for copyright infringement for using your work without attribution, can the same thing be applied to another artist making something like a collage, and not giving attribution to the original artist, illustrator, or photographer if their work is known, or held within an estate/governing institution?

Something to think about and ponder. If and when I get an update on my friends pending copyright case, I’ll post an update to this with the results. It should be interesting.

The thing is, the idea never left me. It’s changed over time, but the basic concept is still here, and now I’m in a position to actually work on it and see it through to completion. The best part is, I have no time constraints, I understand the cost, and I can spread things out as long as it takes to get it finished.

It’s that need to see it through that has been nagging me for all these years. The need to actually make it to see if it’s even a good concept. In my mind, it sounds great, but I won’t know until I make it. Until I see the finished pieces and the entire work.

The original concept relied on a number of random things coming together. Originally, I was going to mail a small United States flag on a stick, like the kind you might wave at a parade, a disposable camera, and a return mail envelope to John or James Smith in every Springfield in the United States.

At the time, I thought Springfield was the most common town name in the US (thanks, Simpsons). It turns out Fairview is. The idea was this. I wanted the individual who got the flag and the camera to have someone take a photo of them holding the flag in their home or outside where they lived. I asked them to write down their occupation on a piece of paper, put the camera back in the return envelope, and mail it back to me.
I planned on developing the photo and then enlarging it, transferring it to a photo litho plate, and creating 50 prints with additional symbols, the state they lived in, their occupation, and some drawn line work. Ambitious, don’t you think? Especially when it’s your last semester of college and you’re in your 20s doing all sorts of college stuff.

The project relied on a number of things I had no control over. Would John or James Smith of Springfield still live at the address? Would they follow the instructed request of getting a photo taken? Would they mail it back to me, or would they just keep the disposable camera? Would the post office lose any of the sent or returned mail? Would any of them take the photo and return the camera in a timely manner? Etc, etc.

The basis of the idea was that we have more in common than we have that sets us apart. And just like today, when I originally thought of this, the United States was pretty divided on many things although not kicked into overdrive thanks to social media and the internet.

Fast forward to today, and thanks to technology and the internet things are a bit different.

Over the weekend, I sent over 130 emails to John Smith’s of Fairview in 48 states and 3 US territories. The request is the same, but now they can use their phone or another device to take a selfie and email it back to me along with their occupation. Gone is the need to hold a United States flag, since there are other ways to include the reference.

In the email, I included a digital mock up of the concept showing them their face would be obscured to keep their identity private. I also asked them if they wanted to, to include any other details like being married or not, kids or not, hobbies, etc. Anything that helps show the commonality that runs through all of us, no matter what our differences might be. This is at the core of the idea behind the artwork to begin with.

Adjusted is the scale. Originally, I planned on making 24x30-inch lithographs. Realistically, the new work will be 8x10 archival prints that get framed in identical wood shadow box frames that may or may not get painted.

I went wide on the email distribution, so I hopefully will get 50, one from each state that’s usable, but if I don’t, those images will be left without an image of the individual John Smith and no occupation.

Today, there is no time frame. This will inevitably be a slow project that may never get finished, but I’m starting it just the same. It’s more about the act of trying to build it at this point and seeing what comes from it.

While I was in Topeka I also decided to check out the Evel Knievel Museum, and yes there really is one. I wanted to go because there is a reoccurring set of appropriated images that I find myself using from Knievel’s 1975 jump and crash at Wembley Stadium in London.

Knievel was such an odd part of 1970s pop culture, along with things like the obsession with the Bermuda Triangle, Pyramid Power, Aztec Indians being the decedents of extra terrestrials (Chariots of the Gods by Erich von Däniken), Big Foot and other swamp and forest monsters, etc.

It was a weird little slice of time with bad made for TV movies, pulp books and magazines, talk radio shows, and more all dedicated to this stuff and the United States seemed to be deeply caught up in it.

Knievel seemed to be everywhere at the time all the way up to his failed Snake River Canyon jump, and then like the rest of these odd pop culture items, he simply faded away, replaced by the latest fad as we moved into the 1980s.

Anyway, after visiting the museum, I started working on a new series of composited images based on a sequence of Knievel crashing after hitting the 13th bus before the ramp at Wembley. There is something about the images of this man attempting to defy the odds and jump over 13 AEC Merlin buses. In many ways it feels like a metaphor to me for the state of the United States right now. Where the world watches as our current administration continues to do things that baffle the mind. Like a slow motion train wreck that none of us can look away from.

There are five images in all. This is one where all of the crash stills have been composited into a single sequence. The others will be separated out and presented in order leading up to this one.

The original photos are by Bob Thomas and an unaccredited AP Photographer

The other part of this is that these long form posts tend to focus on my personal journey and less about advice, technique, or pertinent information that a lot of people are seeking through an email or platform delivered newsletter. I’m still writing these up. Just not as much, and the focus really is about documenting my journey with the artwork I’m making.

About two months ago, I was looking at a number of photographs I had taken of floral arrangements my wife had made from the flowers in our flower beds and trying to decide what to do with them. How to possibly incorporate them into new work and still have them connected with a similar visual language to what I had been producing over the last few years.

At the same time, I was thinking not only about gun violence in the United States, but also how once again we were flexing our military muscle and acting like the cops of the world. All of this led to thinking about a way visually to begin to combine the images of the floral arrangements with images of destruction. Guns, Bombs, Grenades, Landmines, Missiles, etc.

The problem is, I didn’t have any photos of any of those items. Yes, I could do a search on the internet and find plenty of them, but they wouldn’t be mine, and that felt like cheating. So I looking into ways to take photos of these kinds of items which took me down a rabbit hole that I never expected.

The first and easiest was handguns and other firearms. A few phone calls to various gun shops, and a lot of hard rejections finally got me to one shop owner who was willing to let me come in and take photos of some of his inventory, provided I promised not to slander or libel his shop in any way, and he wanted to handle all the weapons. I could photograph, but I couldn’t touch.

The two of us met on a Sunday afternoon, and I spent about three hours taking photos at his shop with each gun isolated against a whit back drop evenly lit so that I could remove the background later for compositing. I took photos of about 20 guns, ranging from handguns to assault style rifles and semi-automatic machine pistol types. As I took the photos, the owner could see I was pretty serious about the project and even at one point asked if I’d be interested in taking photos of his shop and inventory for marketing purposes which I politely declined at the end of the photo shoot.

A couple of days later, I happened to run into a guy that I used to work with that is a serious collector of military memorabilia at my local coffee house. I hadn’t seen him in probably 10 years, so the two of us started catching up on what we had been up to, and after half an hour or so, I mentioned my guns and flowers project, which then led me to ask him if he happened to have any military weapons that I could take photos of.

The answer was yes.

The man had a collection of hand grenades. Yes hand grenades. American, Japanese, French, and German, all from WWII. 10 in all, and he was more than willing to let me take photos of them. This bit of serendipity, running into him at the coffee house and catching up, ended up connecting me with a director of a local military museum, which led me to a number of other collectors helping to fill in the missing items I wanted to get photos of.

In the end, I ended up with photos of landmines, mortar shells, artillery rounds, grenades, and firearms. Enough to build out the series of images that I was interested in making.

This is where the more art journey piece come in.

I almost always work with a series of images. A focused subject with a theme that runs across that body of work until I have exhausted it or run out of material to take it any further. Sometimes the thread is extremely evident, other times it’s a bit more loose, but almost always it’s a series.

I’ve worked this way for years. I’ve never been able to jump from one subject to another where there is no connection, and when I look back across work from a number of years, there is an evolving visual language that is connected and evident. One that I’m not always aware of, but gets noticed by others when they visit the studio or see a cross section of my work.

This series was very defined. I knew exactly what I wanted to say, and had a fairly solid idea of it in my mind’s eye before I even began. I knew that I wanted to carry over the washes and stains that I often use to define backgrounds. I knew that I wanted the primary subject in the frame to be distressed and faded. Effected so that the objects were recognizable but not absolute. I also knew that I wanted each group to be a set of five, with similar backgrounds and possibly some sort of patriotic element appearing.

As I began building the images and the composites, a visual theme began to emerge and evolve. There were a number of things that simply didn’t work, and there were compositional elements that were added to help define specific sections of the work when needed. Each of the 20 images changed multiple times with copious amounts of edits, test prints, quite a bit of staring, physical mark-ups, and evaluation.

I wasn’t sure where this was going to end up when I started it, but as my friend and fellow artist said to me yesterday when he came by the studio and saw the entire set, “All of these are working individually, and as a group, they are a complete visual chapter. It works as a unit and while it definitely says something in it’s own right, it’s open to interpretation as well. The juxtaposition of elements, the duality of masculine and feminine objects, color pallet, symbolism, it’s working”. (I’m paraphrasing here, the conversation went on for quite some time)

And with that, I have decided to call this one done, for now anyway.

A guy I used to occasionally work with, I’m going to call him “Army Dave” because that’s what a lot of people called him in the past, ran into me at my local coffee place about four weeks ago. The encounter ended up being serendipitous, as I had been experimenting with some visuals that featured photographs of floral arrangements I had taken the previous year and the year before. I was trying to come up with ways of combining those images with images of explosive devices and firearms.

My mind had been pretty focused on the latest war the United States has decided to engage in, and since we have been pretty much in a state of some form of armed aggression since I was born, I was looking for an outlet. A way to juxtapose the natural beauty of arranged flowers with something whose only purpose is to kill and maim human beings.

Army Dave provided the first step in bringing things together. You see, Army Dave collects things. Army things, and it turned out that he has a collection of disarmed hand grenades. Ten of them from the Second World War through today. Both American and European.

The two of us had been talking, briefly catching up with lots of “what have you been up to?” And “What are you working on these days?”. It turned out that Army Dave, who is a gifted illustrator was doing freelance work illustrating books on military weapons of the 20th century. So I asked him if he had any explosive devices in his collection or that he was using for visual reference and that’s when he told me about his grenade collection. And this is where I went down the rabbit hole of visual acquisition.

I could have used any number of stock images for my project. A quick search online would have presented me with any number of options, but I want to use photographs that I have taken for my composites, and Army Dave was polite enough to say yes when I asked him if I could take photos of his grenades.

I set a date to meet him at his house, brought me camera gear and a roll of white paper so I can photograph them isolated against the white and easily COB them at a later date. Over the course of a couple of hours I took around ten photos of each grenade and the two of us talked about who I might talk to about getting photos of other weapons to use. Specifically, landmines, artillery shells, and other explosive ordinances that are often lost on the battlefield and discovered decades later as a live round that needs to be disposed of.

His suggestion was to contact all of the three military museums in the area and ask if they had any of these in their collection and could I come take photos of them. With that one suggestion, I was off to the races and looking to expand what I had in mind by also including handguns and assault rifles.

Adding guns lead me to reaching out to gun store owners, which became the second leg of what was rapidly becoming a series of encounters I never imagined having in the last 20 years. So I started dropping in at local gun stores to ask if I could take photos of some of the guns they had in stock. I visited six before I finally got a skeptical yes from one owner and only after showing him an example of what I want to do, as well as a promise that I wouldn’t do anything that would incriminate his store or make him liable in any way.

It was a reluctant yes, and he wanted to supervise handling the firearms, so it was an after-hours arrangement where the hand guns were photographed the same way the grenades were. Against a white background, evenly lit so I could cut out the background later.

Here’s the twist: the owner was so impressed with what he considered “Product Shots,” he actually offered to hire me to photograph a bunch of guns for his marketing materials. I told him I’d think about it. I’m not a gun owner and don’t really want to help promote the sale of more firearms in the United States. We have enough already.

Next up was reaching out to the directors of two local military museums. The WWI Museum and the Frontier Army Museum with emails detailing my project, examples of what I am trying to make, a brief artist statement about the work, and an offer to call them to discuss in greater detail the bigger picture I had in mind.

The request to both was pretty straightforward. Do you happen to have in your collection either on display or in your archive and inert landmines, artillery shells, or other explosive ordinance that I could photograph for a series of artworks I am developing? I really didn’t expect to hear back from anyone, especially within twenty-four hours, but this morning I got a reply from one of them that is somewhat optimistic.

They said tentatively yes to taking photos and provided a small list of what they had available. The best part being that they seemed keenly interested in the overall nature of the project and the subject matter base on the brief statement I included in my emailI think I’ll be able to get images of 3 various-sized artillery shells, maybe a couple more grenades, and some random explosive charges.

I have no idea if any of these are going to work, but I love the idea of tracking this stuff down, checking it out, and seeing where things go. It all comes down to size, shape, and how they read visually when they are reworked, distressed, distorted, and composited into the final piece.

So, we’ll see where this goes. I’m hoping they can connect me with others who might have some of the artifacts I’m looking for that are close by. I’m going to the museum today since they are closed to see what they have and talk to the director about the project. I have the first set of grenade images worked through. Handguns are underway. Hopefully, this morning I’ll come away with more material to build from in the near future.

The realization all three of us had was that about ninety percent of the time, our work isn’t. Not that any of our work is bad, it just isn’t close to what most galleries are showing on their websites. Especially smaller venues that cater to an audience more interested in what could be called “Neutral Images”. Artwork that doesn’t challenge the viewer and sits almost passively in a room, supporting its surroundings. There’s nothing wrong with that kind of work, and from a gallery perspective, it’s probably much easier to sell since it appeals to a wider audience on most levels.

Now, before anyone gets their feathers ruffled, I’m not knocking or condemning any art form, style, subject matter, or artist. I have plenty of artwork in my personal collection that would fall into the same so-called neutral category my friend Robert mentioned in our conversation. The image below is hanging in my living room right now and would probably be considered “neutral”.

The work is technically masterful in its own right, well-executed, pleasant to look at, non-offensive, well-composed, and presented in a way that is both liked and enjoyed. It appeals to a wide audience for more reasons than we have time for today. That could be a post unto itself. Actually, multiple ones, and other people are much better versed and educated who would do a better job of talking about that than I would.

All of this leads up to something, Michael, a portrait painter said to both of us. “It’s neutral, but is it forgettable? The problem I have with so much work I see online these days is that it all looks the same. A trend, style, or process catches on, and then everyone starts doing the same thing. They all get lost in a sea of sameness. No one seems to be pushing the boundaries. I see a lot of work that could have been made by any number of artists, all copying each other stylistically, and with the same visual language.”

Wow. Food for thought. I hadn’t really paid that much attention to it, but then again, I don’t spend that much time on platforms like Instagram or Facebook looking at art. Apparently, Michael does because he proceeded to show both of us more examples than I care to count. And to his point, there is some truth to what he said. At least from the examples he showed us. All of which got us to the next part of the conversation.

Is it better to produce artwork that is neutral and appeals to a wide audience, or to continue to make artwork that is true to your vision and doesn’t follow trends, try to blend in? Work that could pass for any number of other artists’ work, or follows a tried and true formula using proven techniques instead of pushing the envelope in terms of concept and thinking. Work that might not appeal to everyone and leaves the viewer asking questions and thinking about the work long after they have walked away from it.

It’s a question I can’t answer. It’s a question that many people will answer differently and have strong opinions about, none of which are right or wrong. That’s the beauty of art. It doesn’t have to appeal to everyone, and not everyone needs to understand it or even like what you make.

Personally, I like making work that leaves people scratching their heads a bit. Hopefully, that has them thinking about it long after they walked away, and maybe has them asking themselves what was that about? Hopefully, they want to come back and look at it again. My work is definitely not “neutral” in any sense of the word, and it probably never will be. It’s not that I’m not capable of working that way, it’s just that I started to move away from it years ago, as I became more and more interested work was a bit ambiguous, where the meaning was not clearly or easily defined.

Has this decision impacted my success as an artist? It’s hard to say. I show my work regularly in various galleries around the United States. I’ve been asked recently to participate in group shows in Europe, and over the last few years, I have been published in a number of fine art magazines and journals. At the same time, though, work sells slowly, but sales aren’t really the goal. I mean, I’d love to sell more, but if I don’t, it won’t stop me from continuing to make the work that I make. I could have compromised ages ago, but I didn’t, and at this point in my life, it seems rather pointless to now.

My work is evolving though, and not towards anything neutral.

As I mentioned in an earlier note last week, I read a post on another social media platform where an artist was claiming to have made over 400,000 dollars last year selling original paintings and prints through his website alone. While I’m sure it’s possible, it seemed like a bit of a stretch, and the fact that he posted his approximated gross earnings online was a bit of a red flag. Being the ever curious guy that I am though, I decided to check out ht e comments section to see what people were saying and if anyone had questioned him or called him out on his claim.

The comments, hundreds of them, were all mostly along the same lines. Either congratulatory or asking him how he did it. What his secret sauce was, and that is where the inevitable BS raised it’s scammy head. His reply to almost everyone asking how he did it was “I can show you through my online course on how to market your artwork”. I know not everyone said yes, but some people did and if you had done a bit of quick math you would have known right out of the gate that this number, the 400k was a bit of a stretch.

In his post he claimed that 70% of his sales were original painting, and 30% prints of his original work. So lets do a quick breakdown of this scenario and see how it all ads up, especially when you factor in all the outside forces that eat into the thing he needs most to achieve his monetary goal - time.

70% of 400,000 is $280,000 dollars. If he sells his paintings for $1000.00 a pop on average he needs to produce 280 paintings a year.

If he works five days a week, that ads up to a total of 260/261 days a year. So he’s cranking out more than one painting a day. Doable but also questionable, and here’s why.

He needs to sleep, eat, go to the bathroom, buy art supplies, photograph the finished work, color correct it, size it, print it, manage his website, upload new work for sale, remove sold work from the site, correspond with interested buyers, potentially send those buyers additional photos, engage with people that stop by his studio, and on and on.

Each one of those tasks takes time. In a 24 hour day we subtract 7 for sleeping leaving 17 hours. Now take 2 for eating leaving 15. Take another 8 for painting leaving 7 hours to do all of the above only if you don’t have any other interruptions and the only thing you do is work, sleep, and eat. I didn’t even factor in things like personal hygiene, going to the bathroom, conversations, etc.

Let’s go back to the paintings versus prints sales for a bit. He said he averaged $1000.00 per painting and his prints sold for an average of $200.00. To hit the $400,000 mark he has to sell $120,000 worth of prints a year. That is 600 prints a year, once again doable but doubtful. That’s 1.64 prints a day for every day of the year like I said possible but highly doubtful that it’s probable.

Once agin we have to think about the time factor here as well. Let’s say he has a nice high end printer like an Epsopn SureColor P900 or a Canon Image ProGraph PRO 300. And let’s say he’s printing 13x19 prints of his 24x36 inch paintings. The print time is going to be between 2 and 5 minutes on average. Split that down the middle and you are looking at 3 minutes per print. Then each one of those prints needs to be signed, and packaged addressed and shipped. If he’s shipping flat they need to have a backer inserted to keep them from bending with some sort of protective acid free slip sheet between the print, the backer, and the plastic bag. All of that has to get inserted into a mailer of some sort. Probably 10 to 15 minutes of work all in all right?

Then it needs to go to the shipping facility. I suppose he could have them picked up, I mean he is selling $120,000 in prints a year but I doubt he is. So even if he batches things and takes a number of print to say UPS at the same time there is the amount of time eaten away by printing a number of prints, packing them, labeling them and dropping them off which eats into the 7 hours he had to create new work that he’ll need to photograph, color correct and set up to print later.

All of this comes back to something I said at the very beginning of this. His replies to everyone asking for advice on how to be as successful as he is. How to make $400,000 a year selling your art. He said I’ll show you how for a price. So, maybe he’s not making 400k a years selling art. Maybe he’s really making an unknown amount by praying on people desperate to sell there art and buying into the “You to can be an overnight success, and get rich and famous through social media” ploy.

Like I said, his claim is doable, but highly doubtful and a bit of quick calculating and thinking about his claim shows it right off the bat. I’m certain that a number of people in the comments bought into his pitch, or people clicked the link in his profile and signed up for his seminar. Hopefully most didn’t. Remember if it sounds to good to be true, it probably is.

The average salary for a doctor in the US is approximately $374,000 to $387,000 per year as of late 2025. So this guy is claiming he made more than your general practitioner in 2025 selling average landscape paintings and prints of them.

I liked both over Art Pal and Fine Art America for a couple of reasons. First off they were interested in actual artwork and not print on demand which the other two seemed to focus on. I didn’t want my work reproduced on mugs, or blankets or some other product. The other rub I had was both Fine Art America and Art Pal had a focus on licensed material. Magazine covers from Sports Illustrated, Rolling Stone, famous photographs of celebrities and more. They seemed to be promoting those over any of the artist using their services and it just left me with a bad feeling.

So, with my choices narrowed down to Saatchi and Cohart, I decided to pull together a few pieces that I want to build portfolios out with and test the waters. I gave myself a deadline of 18 months to build up and track sales results. To monitor progress and determine if these two platforms were worth the effort. I had read success stories as well as the deterrents, so I knew it wasn’t going to be an overnight success. That it was going to be a long game with slow and steady progress if I had any at all.

So here’s what I learned and why I dropped both of them about nine months ago.

First off both platforms push artists that have large followings on social media and have brought that with them. They are looking for artists with sales records that bolster their platform because this is where they make their money. So, if you are the new kid on the block, it’s going to require a lot of hustle to cut through the noise, get discovered and hopefully promoted by the platform itself.

Consider this, Saatchi Art has about 94,000 artist on their site. And while they claim that they have sold 1.4 million works in 110 countries, they do not tell you over what period of time. Yes they have an extensive reach, but they are focused on promoting a small number of the 94,000 artists using the service.

If you want to succeed, you are going to have to promote the living hell out of you and your work. That means constant emails and pushes to social media every time you upload a new work. It becomes a full time job unto itself and even then there is no guarantee for success. It’s not impossible, but you need to consider the amount of time you will need to spend making reels and videos, cross promoting to Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Threads, YouTube and every other platform under the sun and making sure that all of those link back to the platform you are using.

I spent about nine months working on a promotion strategy for both platforms. Since I don’t make process videos or reels it meant that I would have to promote my work, each new piece uploaded, through my own personal mailing list and to the two social media platforms I used on a regular basis - Threads and Instagram.

What I learned was even though I was promoting via social media, that promotion was getting lost in the noise of those platforms. I was a slave to the whims of the algorithm and had little control over the success or failure of those posts. More importantly I wasn’t reaching the right people even when I tried setting up the Instagram posts with a paid promotion to reach a wider audience.

I got views, but no engagement. I got click throughs, but no conversions to sales.

Email did slightly better because my list were people that had purchased work before or that I knew. {People that were interested in what I was working on and wanted to see the latest work that I was promoting. The interesting thing is though, most of these people would check out the work on either Saatchi or Cohart and then reach out to me for a studio visit or ask me to send them higher resolution better quality images. If they were interested in a purchase, they bought directly from me.

In eighteen months on Saatchi and Cohart I made one sale through Saatchi. I had little to no organic growth on either platform, and found that I could do better by emailing potential collectors directly. In addition I had more success by word of mouth or by applying for open calls to exhibitions where people could see my work in person and talk to the gallerist about the work and the artist that made it.

At the end of a year and a half I decided it was time to change things up and develop a new strategy moving forward. I dropped both Saatchi and Cohart so I could focus on my own website and promotion of my work.

I did this for a number of reasons. I control the content. I control the promotion. I’m not competing with any other artists, and the noise the other platforms had. I could grow my email list and I could be more selective about how I chose to engage with social media platforms.

My approach is fairly simple. I exported my subscriber list from Substack which had been slowly building over the last year. I merged that email list with my existing one and subdivided it into a handful of different categories. Current owners, Substack subscribers that haven’t purchased, local galleries, galleries that have shown my work, publications that have featured my work, people that like my work but have never collected.

Then I rebuilt my website with a transactional page and a blog page. When I upload new work to the portfolio section, if that work is available it goes on the transactional page. When this happens I send an email to some of the lists above. The people that have already purchased, the people that have expressed interest, galleries both locally and that have shown my work in other states. The goal is to let them know I have new work available, and they are finding out first. Sort of an insiders club for interested parties.

Blog posts get emailed to a more general audience including those listed above, and the blog posts get cross posted on social media platforms as well. Blog posts happen about once a month, and I try to keep them short enough that they are manageable and quick to read. The rule of thumb is they should take more than five minutes of your time to read on average.

The third component is direct posts to social media. I have links in my bio on all platforms to my portfolio site, but I’ll be honest I’ve never made a sale from social media. The social media posts are there to get a bit of discovery, and show that I am active when a gallery or collector decides to look. Its part of the current world of discovery and unfortunately a necessary part of life these days that isn’t going away any time soon. And no I don’t have accounts on every platform. I dropped Facebook, Xitter, Bluesky, and LinkedIn. I never had any success with them and simply didn’t want to continue to put in the effort there.

Finally I spend every Monday morning looking through open calls, researching the gallery sites associated with them and applying for calls that is a good fit for my work. I’ve had about a 60 percent success rate for being accepted and about a 30 percent success rate for sales at those venues. More importantly with each one I have either seen an increase in traffic to my website or received an inquiry about my work via email.

This is what has been working for me. It requires less effort on my part than the constant hustle with platforms like Saatchi, Cohart, Art Pal etc, and I’ve had more success working this way. It also frees up more time to be in the studio working rather than sitting gat the computer or on a device constantly promoting in a sea of other artist competing for the same eyes.

I’m not saying don’t use any of the platforms I’ve talked about here. I’m just saying that they weren’t worth the effort for me. If you research them you’ll find loads of videos telling you how to sell your art on them and claiming things like “I made $400,000.00 last year selling prints through…”. If it’s true it’s rare or probably a bit of an exaggeration.

At the end of the day, keep going and keep trying new tactics until you find what works for you. There’s not a one size fits all approach and what worked for me might not work for you or anyone else.

And remember, it’s a long game so patience is your friend.

Because of the limited distribution, I reached out to them and asked if I could post the interview here on Substack and link to it from a handful of of other sources since most people probably would never see it otherwise. They were kind enough to say yes, so here is their edited version of our question and answer session on Zoom.

How long have you been working as an artist? When did you start, or realize that this was something you wanted to pursue?

One of my earliest memories is from around age three. I’m sitting on my mother’s lap at her drawing board watching her work on a pen and ink illustration for I think Child Craft magazine. Around that same time I have a distinct memory of her giving my older brother and I a big box of crayons and colored pencils. I’m on the floor at the coffee table in the living room and I’m drawing a helicopter flying over an island. So, I guess since I was a child. I’ve always done it. Worked in some sort of visually creative field. More to your point I probably became fully committed when I went to art school. Like one of my professors said in a crit, you didn’t come here to learn how to draw, you came here to learn how to do it every day. I guess forty plus years ago then.

When you were in art school what was your primary focus?

Painting and print making. I took all sorts of other classes. Sculpture, ceramics, life drawing etc but painting and printmaking, especially lithography and intaglio were the real focus during that period.

Did you continue with both after graduation?

Yes and no. Painting is easy, you can do it anywhere. Lithography and intaglio printing however requires a lot of space, things like exhaust hoods because of the etching materials like hydrochloric acid. Drying racks, storage for paper and inks. I took workshops where those tools were available but never had the money or space to set up a print making studio of my own.

What was it about print making that drew you to it?

There are a number of things. I like the idea of working with closed editions and limited number sets. I also like the process, the thinking that goes into understanding how color layers on top of each other to create something new, with results that you might not expect. The more I got into it the more interested I became in combining photo litho plates with traditional stone lithography. Combining photography elements with hand drawn and painted elements. That still influences my work today.

Were you using a computer at this time or was it all still analog, traditional processes?

I was aware of Macintosh computers, but they were still pretty rudimentary in terms of software. The school had an Amiga and I think an SGI workstation but I never used them. We all had a pretty arrogant rejection of computers when it came to making art. Which is funny since I use them all the time now and treat it just like another tool in the tool box.

One thing that I still think about is when I discovered using the photo litho plates. I had a box of 4x5 film negatives. I have no idea where I got them. They were random photos of people, almost snapshot like. Anyway, I started using them with the plates and then layering those with other elements I was drawing or painting on the stones. Sometimes 10 to 20 layers of things, slowly building up the image. This was before anything like Photoshop existed, but that way of thinking totally influenced how I use software today.

How so? What from that experience has impacted your current work?

Today I work in Photoshop layering elements and working with scans of paint strokes, drawn lines, washes, spatters etc along with photographs I take or have sourced through thrift store finds. All of the elements created with traditional mediums are scanned as gray scale items and then separated out into new layers in a new document. Those layers are colorized and composited to create the new image. So it’s a lot of back and forth positioning items for composition, seeing how color works together, understanding how the texture will flatten out when printed, how the substrate will effect the final print. It’s a very similar way of thinking about the work.

So you still create all of the textural elements and drawn components by hand?

Yeah, every one of them. It’s a bit time consuming and I know there are a lot available on the internet. I like making my own because they are unique to me, and come from the artist hand.

Any AI or other cheats?

No. Absolutely no AI in the sense of having AI generate something for me. The closest would be using the object selection or remove tool in Photoshop.

I saw that you often get grouped in with collage artists, but you don’t really consider yourself one. Could you explain that a bit.

I don’t really think of myself as a collage artist, because I’m not really doing what collage artist do. I’m compositing elements but I’m not cutting objects out and pasting them together. When I use a photograph, it might get cropped, but I never really cut the element or object out and paste into something else. I also don’t use things like magazine ads, or typography. I went through a short period where I was, but it never really clicked with me. My work isn’t that abstract or chaotic. If anything it leans more to John Baldessarri or Jack Goldstein than to Kurt Schwiters or Hanah Hoch.

I suppose, I could see why I would get grouped in with collage artist, especially if you are just seeing the work online. The reality is though a lot of my work gets additional work done to the print. They are drawn on, painted on, mounted to wood panels with additional mediums applied so at that point, in my opinion they move even further away from traditional collage work.

Do you ever do so called traditional collage? Cut paper?

No. I haven’t in years, probably not since art school days.

What is a typical day like for you?

Coffee while reading the news in the morning. An hour on the exercise bike every other day. Probably sketching or writing down ideas, followed either by studio time or going somewhere to take photos that I can use later. Lunch, and more studio time or writing emails. I do dedicate about four hours on Monday to look at open calls, email potential galleries, and enter expenses and stuff into a spread sheet. Overall the schedule is pretty loose though. I make time to hit galleries or museums, grab coffee with friends, visit other artists studios. And then there is always the regular old life stuff that needs to get done like taking out the trash and mowing the lawn. It’s not all glamor and fun ya know.

You mentioned sketching and writing down ideas, could you expand on that a bit?

Sure. I learned a long time ago that it’s important to keep sketch books. A place where you can not only jot down ideas, but a place where you draw from life or your imagination. It keeps the mind fresh and the eyes sharp. I come from a pretty traditional background in terms of learning and training so the sketchbook is a fundamental part of that. It’s a habit that was instilled in me in art school and has never left me. It’s foundational and fundamental to the way I work.

How is 2026 shaping up for you in terms of work and representation? The last year or so has been a bit tough for many visual artists.

2025 was actually pretty good for me. I was in 10 group shows around the country. I was picked up for a number of publications. Ovum Artis, Studio Visit, Artist Close Up to name a few. I’ll be in an issue of New American Painting later this year. Sales were OK. Not great, but not bad either. I’m hoping the trend continues in 2026. I keep applying to open calls and reaching out to galleries. I’d love to have a solo show this year, but you take what you can get and don’t let rejections get you down. Bottom line I’ll keep making this stuff even if no one is interested in it. The work keeps evolving and eventually it will appeal to someone.

Any final thoughts you’d like to share with us before our time is up?

Let me say thanks for taking the time to talk with me this morning. It’s been a pleasure.

If you are an artist reading this keep doing what you’re doing and if you are a gallery owner don’t be afraid to take on the emerging artist, or the little guy that has only shown in the local coffee shop. The art world seems to be shifting a bit from investments so there is more room for everyone at the table. It’s truly an exciting time to be an artist in what is a very unpredictable and unstable wold these days.

OK, one more question. You have said your work often takes on themes that involve the perception of social, economic, or political status as presented by mass media. How has the current state of things impacted your work?

I went through a pretty dark period between November of 24 and about April of 25. I was making wok that was a direct reflection of what I saw happening in the U.S. To be honest I wasn’t really happy with the pieces I was producing. They were a bit to in your face. I still take subtle jabs at what I see happening but more in line with what I had been doing before. Juxtaposing images that are supposed to reflect the American Dream, with images that don’t always fit. Lately it’s been quite a few cropped images of people with guns, cowboys, and military types with suburban houses and activities, screaming teenage girls, prairie landscapes, and things that don’t quite match up. I see that continuing for some time to come.

As the year rolls toward it’s last day in a little over a week, I decided to take a look back at 2025 and do a little wrap up of accomplishments and failures, and the other little things that are maybe feel less important but still had an impact.

When 2025 began, I had turned down two opportunities for local gallery representation simply because my work didn’t seem like a good fit for their target audiences. I had been turned down for representation by three others and was wondering what my next steps would be in terms of getting work in front of people and moving things forward.

Sites like Saatchi, and Cohart were dead ends, but there were other options. So after having a couple of conversations with friends and fellow artists, I decided to take a different approach. I started looking for opportunities outside of my local area on a national level. Open calls, grants, publications, residencies etc.

Using sites like CaFE, Public Artist, and ArtConnect I started exploring opportunities on a national level, and through a few connections made through social media I was accepted into a number of group shows and two national arts publications in 2025.

Between February and October of this year I applied for a total of 21 calls for artist, and was accepted into eight in Rhode Island, Texas, Washington, Colorado, California, Kansas, Arizona, and Illinois. I spent a total of $500.00 in entry fees, but sold 3 pieces as a result. I made my investment back and turned a bit of a profit from the little bit of effort put in to expand my reach beyond local and regional venues.

I currently have work submitted to about 10 more open calls, and work that has been accepted into a repeat gallery in the Denve area for a show opening in January of 2026, so the year is closing out on a high note and next year is starting off with something on display right out of the gate.

I can’t complain.

More importantly, 2025 was a year that I began to refine a new way of working. A new process that is taking shape and defining a specific visual voice that has been percolating and evolving for sometime. Recently my wife pulled a number of work from storage racks and flat files, some as old as twenty to twenty five years. She lined them up in my studio and then looked at me and said, “Do you see the common thread? Do you see the connection?”

It’s not something that I do. I don’t go back and compare work from years ago to work I’m doing today. I’m to busy making it to stop and evaluate a block of pieces spanning a couple of decades, and it’s probably something I should do more often. Why? Because she was right, there is a common thread that has always been a part of my work. The combination of photography and hand drawn elements with a nod to graphic design principals and structured esthetics.

That is something that every venue and publication I was featured in this year touched on. Something that gallerist and publicist all mentioned in some capacity, and those comments were what led me back to working more on paper, with digital files as well as traditional materials and got me to thinking about the direction I want my work to take moving forward.

I’m leaning in to work on paper, larger sizes, closed editions, and new techniques. With that said, there were a few epic failures this year as well.

Over the summer I started looking at ways to work with plexiglass, either with direct printing or with optical clear vinyl applications. I spent a lot of money working with a local vendor and to put it bluntly, it was an epic failure. I learned quite a bit about the process though and spoke with a couple of artist that are doing direct to plex printing.

I realized that I was going to need a large sum of money to pull off my vision, and a vendor with more experience producing fine art direct to plex printing. So I started writing grant proposals for 2026, and fingers crossed I’m hoping something comes through. If not, it goes on the back burner until I have the funds to proceed.

I also had a number of failures trying to mount paper to wood panels as a base for mixed media work. The lessons learned though were valuable. Paper, Glue, Surface Prep, medium types, drying times… All things that effected the outcome of a number of pieces that ended up getting sanded down for reuse at a later date.

That’s the thing though, it’s all about trial and error. About sometimes not playing it safe and knowing you might fall flat on your face and not giving a damn if you do. So, you could say that 2025 was a year of throwing caution to the wind, going out on a limb and going for it on a number of levels.

So the wrap up in a nutshell might be, I tried and I failed. I tried and I was successful. I tried and I learned so much. I didn’t give up on any of it. I realized that this is probably an on going pattern for the next 20 to 30 years, provided my health and mental faculties hold out.

To everyone that has been following along on my journey through the news letter and notes here on Substack, thanks for sticking with me. I hope you all continue to follow along and watch as I try new things, make discoveries, shift my focus only to come back to where I have already been, and hopefully figure some more of this out along the way.

At my weekly coffee gathering this morning a guy I used to work with ages ago happened to be in the coffee shop and decided to join the three of us to catch up and talk about what we’ve all been up to. All four of us worked at the same place for a number of years as graphic designers, illustrators, and artists producing everything from greeting cards to store layout designs. To say the skill set is diverse is an understatement.

All of us had studied art in college, and had found our way to corporate America to pay the bills working for an employer that probably had the largest group of graphic designers, copywriters, illustrators, photographers, visual artists, art and creative directors under one single roof in the mid 1990s. I would estimate tow to three thousand of us combined at the peak.

One of the topics of conversation that happened today was started by our guest, Gary, who started talking about a notorious creative director we all had worked with. I’m going to call him Chris for convenience and to cover my but just in case he reads this and puts two and two together.

Chris was hired from a large advertising agency, and his claim to fame was creating a series of television adverts for a national fast food chain that won a number of awards. His role was leading the team, making the pitch to the client, and selling the ideas. His background was copywriting, but it turned out in hindsight to everyone that he wasn’t much of a copywriter. He also wasn’t a graphic designer, photographer or illustrator. He was however that creative director or art director that tended to hover over someone’s shoulder telling them what to make, what to change, what to revise, over and over again in small steps for hours on end.

And this is how I’m going to connect this to AI in the art, design and photography world today.

As Gary talked about Chris the conversation slowly shifted as all of us began to realize what Chris was doing back around 2010 was exactly what a lot of AI prompters are doing today. They are simply telling a machine to make what they don’t have the actual skill set to do themselves.

Chris’ prompts to a designer or copywriter were exactly the same as someone prompting an AI system.

“Draw me a catfish wearing a top hat. Make the background blue. Less blue, more neutral. Shift the background to teal. Add a monocle to the fish. Can I see it in the style of Monet? Move the fish to the right half an inch. Now up an inch. Lets add in a tropical Bar he’s standing at. Change the lighting source to overhead. Can you add a window with a beach scene on the wall. Make the background graduated from teal to brown…”

You get the idea. Chris wasn’t able to draw or illustrate his idea and didn’t want to take the time to learn how or develop those skills. The same thing was applicable to his writing, and other aspects of his work.

He simply wanted someone to be his hands and execute his idea either from scratch or from source material he had found on the internet or in print. The ideas themselves were more often than not, not very original. The execution would always become predictable or repetitive because he was simply sampling work that he had seen elsewhere and asking someone else to make repeated changes to the initial design or illustration until he got what he wanted.

Very similar to what many people are doing when creating images using AI. Rather than learn the skills necessary to produce the work, they are simply asking a machine to make something base on something the machine has seen and learned from. Then making repeated changes to it until they get the result they want.

I read a paper from the MIT journal about a year ago that predicted AI image generators would begin to eat themselves learning from AI generated images. The prediction was that as this begins to happen, the images that are being generated will begin to look more and more alike. Similar to the way a specific illustration style would catch on and spread like wildfire back int he day as it gained traction in print publications and broadcast. Since I don’t use AI to create any of my work, and to be honest haven’t even touched something like Chat GPT, Firefly, DALL-E, or Stable Diffusion I’m not sure I can say with any confidence where this is going or whether or not the MIT paper is onto something.

What I can say is this, I’m not worried about AI taking away any graphic design or illustration jobs. Same for photographers. I think there will be an impact, but not an entire career killing one. I say this because the one thing that AI can’t do yet is really collaborate on something.

It can take prompts. It can make revisions. It can do all the things that Chris did to so many designers, illustrators, and copywriters, but it can’t bounce ideas back and forth to create something truly original and unique. Which is something a good art director, or creative director is able to do with their team. It might explain why so many TV adverts that are being made with AI these days look so bad. Why so much AI generated illustration looks alike and can be spotted right away.

As for my own work, I’m not concerned that AI might learn from the images I have posted online. My work in constantly evolving and while AI might learn form something I posted a year ago and create something similar, it has no way of predicting what I’ll be making today, tomorrow or a decade from now.

My grandmother was full of little phrases that she used on a regular basis. Some of them part of the American vernacular, some archaic and removed from modern life as we know it. An act of futility was “Like pounding sand in a rat hole”. Freezing temperatures “It’s colder than a well diggers ass in the Yukon.” Alternative ways to get things done, “There’s more than one way to skin a cat.” Colorful, sometimes boring on offensive, and part of her upbringing in rural America in the early part of the twentieth century.

Using her phrase about alternative ways to get things done, there’s more than one way to skin a cat (I’m a cat person so please don’t bombard me with comments about how I’m a cat hater etc.) I’m trying to reach out beyond social media to not only reach a wider audience, but actually sell some of my work online.

A few months ago I put together a very simple Wordpress website to show recent and archived work, my CV, and an option to contact me about work. As of today I have added a “Shop” section where I have a handful of original work available for sale, with a goal of adding more as time allows. There is a blog section in development that will hopefully replace long form posts that would normally be featured on sites like Substack or linked to on Threads. I’m not leaving either platform completely, but I am pivoting a bit to something I have more control over, and isn’t influenced by fickle algorithms and business models driven by commercial growth as most social media is these days.

If you have subscribed to my Substack feed you will receive an email from Wade Johnston Visual Arts letting you know that I have migrated my email list from here to the Wordpress site. You’ll have an option to opt out, or if you prefer to sign up to receive email announcements about blog posts from the site. I promise I won’t spam your in box, blog posts will be about as frequent as Substack newsletter posts, so maybe, maybe once every couple of weeks.

I also promise they’ll be short. Nothing longer than a two to three minute read at the most. I learned a long time ago with email marketing that anything longer than three minutes will probably get scanned not read, not shared, and probably forgotten. It’s an unfortunate reflection of how short peoples attention spans have become in the last couple of decades.

Aside from trying to get the website to a somewhat functional state I have been working away in the studio. New work on paper, a couple of failed experiments, closing out the plexiglass project that I haven’t been able to fully resolve, and submitting work to multiple open calls. To be honest, I’ve been spending more time in the studio than working on the website (something that could be a full time job if I let it.) and it shows. So the month of December is hopefully going to be more focused on getting the website complete and fully fleshed out before the end of the year.

So, look for an email, take a gander at the website, browse the art work for sale if you feel so inclined, and note that I’m not dropping Substack, just shifting things around a bit as it focuses more on Notes, Video, and Celebrity Accounts moving forward.

Last week I reposted an article on Substack about how Instagram had created something the author called “Aesthetic Photography” and how in his words created “visual botox”. Where so much of what you see looks the same. Not bad, not good, just one note. Identical in many ways to the thousands of other images people see on social media daily.

When I reposted it, I made this comment;

“Something that I always remember from art school critiques was the consistent question asked by every professor in almost every class. “Is what you are making memorable or forgettable?” We can all learn to make perfectly designed images that follow all the rules for aesthetic perfection no matter what the medium. It takes a bit more to create something that lingers, or draws you back in again and again. Something with that certain spark that truly stands out and is more than just a perfected look designed for a quick visual rush, and forgotten an hour later.”

And that comment rubbed a number of people the wrong way. Not only on Substack but the other platforms where I cross posted. In fact I received a number of direct messages that were for lack of a better term, accusatory nastygrams. And because I can’t leave things alone, my replies and secondary comments just seemed to stir things up even more.

It got me to thinking though. Thinking about something I witnessed long before the internet and social media. Something that took place over a weekend in art school when I volunteered to help two professors out by manning slide projectors showing grant applicant artworks.

The setup was very straightforward. There were stacks of carousels and my job was to click the advance or reverse button when asked and swap the carousels out when they were done. All in all there were maybe 25 total for each professor. The work that was being shown was all 2D work, and each applicant got up to 10 images. Around 2000 images in all. I figured this would be an all day event since each slide would need to be scrutinized and evaluated. I was wrong, and that brings me back to my comment about “Is it memorable or forgettable”.

I loaded the first carousel and the professors started in. Next, next, next, next, stop, next, next next next, back, stop… This was rapid fire, in some cases they spent less than two seconds on a slide. When they did stop, they would ask me to remove the slide and then they would mark down the information written on it. Artist name and the title of the piece.

This went on for hours, at the same pace, and in the end they had selected just 80 works. One carousel worth of artwork. Then we started again. This time slower, with each piece getting a more scrutinized review of a minute or so until it had been reduced to about 20 pieces from three artists. These were the finalist and they were selected for an in person interview and presentation.

It sounds a bit brutal and at the time I thought to myself how can these two make such quick judgements about work they are literally glancing at as I clicked the advance button on the projector. So when it was all over I asked them to explain the process and how they could filter the work so quickly. It came down to something that both of them said. “The pieces that we had you skip past, didn’t stand out. The reason there are two of us making the selections is so it is less subjective to a particular taste and more aligned with work that is unique or original in some capacity.” So I pressed them a bit on this the way any twenty something art student questioning authority might, and both of them said when you get to a certain point in a round about way that when you have looked at as much artwork as we have in the course of our careers, you just know.

At the time I didn’t buy it, and to some extent still question it a bit, even with works that have been declared to be great masterpieces, and yet I do get it because I see myself doing it when I’m doom scrolling on a platform like Instagram or Foto.

Scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, stop. Scroll, scroll, scroll, scroll, stop, click on bio link, back out, scroll, scroll, scroll…

I also find myself doing it at art galleries and museums. Over the weekend I visited four galleries and one art museum. There are a handful of works that still linger with me and I want to go back and revisit. At the same time the rest aren’t really there.

They weren’t good or bad. They just were. Like I said in a reply to a comment on my repost, visual muzak, or as I sometimes call it “Target Modern”. Kind of generic, aesthetically pleasing, background visuals. There’s nothing wrong with them, and they appeal to a lot of people, but at the same time they all look the same, and I think that is what both art school professors were trying to point out so many years ago.

Social media has flattened this even more. AI will flatten it more again. So the question becomes in today’s world, how do you, or do you even differentiate yourself from the crowd? I don’t have an answer, and I’m not judging anyone or their artwork. I’m simply reflecting back on something from years ago and relating it to today’s world. And yes, I’m very aware that all of this is just as applicable to my own work as well.

One of the things I learned early on as a graphic designer was how to work within the limitations set by either budgets, or technology. When your client has a budget for a two color brochure, but wants the impact of full color with varnish and an emboss treatment, you figure out ways to give them something that satisfies their need without breaking the bank.

The same thing has held true for anything that I have done with my artwork over the years. You work within the limitations of your budgets and what you can achieve with the tools you have at hand. Projects this year have led me down a couple of paths that are driven by both of these factors. Money, and technology.

I had big dreams for the plexiglass project that I hoped would allow me to produce a series of printed layers that would be stacked and back lit to create a new effect. Like one my works in a semi exploded view. After six months of trial and error the realization hit that it probably wasn’t going to work at this time.

The cost was becoming unmanageable and the quality of the printed vinyl layers simply didn’t have the impact that I was looking for. There is a solution that allows me to print direct to the plexiglass much the way some sign fabrication processes work, but the cost is just to prohibitive to justify pursuing it at this time. So it’s getting shelved for now. I wrote a grant proposal that hopefully will get accepted and allow me to make it, but that’s now a future project for 2026 or 2027.

Another limitation I have run into, but has forced me to think in new and more creative ways is the printer I picked up for hard proofing images before sending them out for large format fabrication.

I have been taking work that involves mounting a large format digital print to either aluminum Dibond or to cradled wood panels and then working the surface with traditional tools for some time. I’ve got a process down that works, but recently while looking at a 24x30 inch wood panel I thought to myself “Why don’t I print four separate images and mount them to the panel instead of one large image…” Well, there are some caveats that I didn’t factor in.

After a few experiments, it became clear to me that simply taking a larger image and dividing it into four individual 13x19 inch files and printing each out wasn’t going to work. There were issues with color shift, and alignment, that appeared between the first print and the last.

The paper would stretch slightly or not align exactly the same as the sheet before it generating as much as an eighth of an inch vertical offset. I’m not a production designer and my studio isn’t set up to really function like a professional printer, so even thought the color settings don’t change between prints, the color did shift. I can overcome this in the future by installing printer and paper profiles specific to my printer and the paper I’m using but for now I’m trying something else.

So what do I need to do? Hmmmm. Well instead of trying to assemble a single image from four pieces of paper, I decided to treat each quadrant as an individual section eliminating the need for perfect alignment and allowing for color to shift slightly between the sections. The other approach since I want to work larger, is to use 13x19 panels that can hold a single print but function as a cohesive unit. Think of it as a 19 x 52 inch single work made from four individual panels. This solution becomes scalable allowing me to scale in both vertical and horizontal directions creating something new and unique, yet similar to the work I have been doing for the last couple of years.

This is where things are getting fun, because I’m having to think beyond what I have been doing, and embrace the limitations of a tool to create something different.

The best part, it’s cost effective and If I screw something up I’m not going to go broke reprinting and starting over. Yes the cost of ink, and paper is there, but five bucks a sheet versus the cost of a large format print from Mpix or Whitewall is manageable.

I already have a couple of new pieces that I’m plotting out using the new method, and hopefully I’ll have images to share of the finished work in a couple of weeks.

If you have been following along on Substack, you probably know already that I recently took a little trip to Scotland to relax and recharge. Something that was really needed after a busy summer of new work being created and both older and newer work getting accepted to a handful of group shows and publications. All of which added up to unexpected long hours and trips to FedEx, after building shipping containers and writing certificates of authenticity. So a trip abroad was much needed, even if the getting there and back was more than a bit taxing.

I spent the last week in Scotland driving through the highlands to various locations, and got to spend a couple of days in Edinburgh. One on the way in, and one on the way out. Not really long enough to enjoy the city to it’s fullest, but long enough to know I need to plan a trip to go back. The highlands were wonderful though and provided plenty of opportunities to stop, hike, take photos, and in some cases get off the beaten tourist path to find a couple of hidden gems that the locals pointed me to.

And no, I won’t be telling anyone where they are because I don’t want them to become the next social media tragedy. Where some influencer discovers the spot, posts the location and then it gets over run and trashed by thousands of people seeking the next how “Selfie Spot” for the ultimate photo, reel, or TikTok video. Sorry, not sorry.

Case in point, I stopped at Glen Coe on my way up to Loch Ness at a lovely little lake at the bottom of the valley. When I got there, there were no tour busses. Just a few people that had stopped, all of us interested in getting photos of the absolutely still water reflecting the mountains that surrounded it. After about 15 minutes we decided to drive about a half mile down the road, and hike to the top of an overlook that most people wouldn’t venture to. Getting there requires you to climb a fairly steep hill on a wet and rocky trail that is surrounded by water soaked grass and mud. Totally worth the effort though to get to the top, where you have an expansive view back down across the valley on one side and out toward the North Sea on the other. When we were done, we needed to head back down the motorway past where we had originally stopped by the lake. As we drove past there were six tour busses that had stopped. Each carrying around 80 or so people. All of them had flooded out onto the area I had just been at and completely overtaken it, disrespecting the farm owners property and the posted signs saying clearly “No Entry Beyond This Point”.

It was complete insanity with around 400 people just milling about snapping photos with their phones and taking selfies or recording video for Instagram and TikTok. As we rolled past I said to my wife “our timing was perfect. 30 minutes later and we would have been in the middle of that.” I felt bad for the property owner, and wouldn’t be surprised if in the near future they erect some sort of fencing and a gate to keep the hordes of tourist off the land and up on the road.

This is why there are so many places that are now limiting tourist traffic. People simply have no boundaries anymore, or respect for not only private property but the land itself.

In a similar vein, when we did get back to Edinburgh we were able to get tickets to the Andy Goldsworthy exhibition at the National Gallery. I was excited because on a late Tuesday afternoon I expected there would be less traffic at the museum. My feelings were heightened when I booked tickets online and it said there were still almost 50 left for our time slot. My thought was, no crowds.

I was wrong.

The show is fantastic, specifically the site specific work that Goldsworthy created for four gallery spaces on the main floor. If you waited long enough, the throng of visitors would ebb and you could actually spend a few minutes uninterrupted taking in the work in the space. The smaller galleries on the floors below were a different story. Tight spaces filled with lingering visitors all trying to take in photos, drawings, and video in brief bursts. I bet the average Tim spent in front of a single work was less than fifteen seconds in total. To make matters worse, a lot of people were taking photos of the photos on the walls, or once again snapping selfies of themselves and friends in front of a work they felt was important. All of this probably could have been remedied by simply reducing the number of tickets per time slot, and spacing the time slots out by thirty minutes to allow for some breathing room.

The main point of both of these antidotes is this, we need to relearn how to spend more time looking at the world around us, not through the screen in front of us. As I sat on the plane flying home yesterday I kept thinking about how much so many people missed, because they were more interested in what they could capture for a social media post. The natural beauty of the Scottish Highlands. The amazing art work in the Goldsworthy show as well as the rest of the gallery. The hustle and bustle of street life in Edinburg on a cool rainy afternoon. The quiet moment in a city park surrounded by fall color and dramatic skies.

The lesson I learned is not only to keep my phone in my pocket, but while keeping my camera close by, only pick it up when something truly amazing asks to be captured.

Earlier this morning on a popular social media platform I read a post from a young woman where she said that she had dedicated many years to making art, and worked in all sorts of mediums, but didn’t know what category of art she fit into anymore or what steps she needed to take to find her true voice, and break out as a visual artist in a highly competitive world.

I think this is a predicament a lot of artist find themselves in at some point on their journey, and it’s one that isn’t easily answered, and the answer won’t be the same for everyone.

So this morning at my weekly “Let’s grab a coffee and shoot the shit about art stuff” get together, I put this out as a topic of conversation for the four of us that showed up this week. None of us had a definitive answer, but we did have some common threads, none of which guarantee a break out moment but might help lead to one.

First off you have to be able to talk about what you are making. Actually talk about it in depth beyond technique. Talk about the why you chose a certain style, medium, subject matter. How it relates to or doesn’t relate to a specific genre of art. How your work has evolved over time. What influences and references have impacted you and what you produce over the years. This line of conversation was one that all of us came back to over and over again.

You could be the most talented individual in the world. Rendering masterful brush strokes, chiseling marble to reveal the most exquisite form, capturing light in a way that leaves people speechless, but if you can’t talk about it beyond technique you probably won’t stand out let alone break out from the thousands of other talented artists capable of doing something similar or even better.

The other point that seemed to come up more than once was the ability to promote your work beyond the over saturated social media platforms. The ability to reach out to galleries or coffee shops, or any other venue that might hold an opportunity to showcase you r work. And you need to have thick skin and be willing to accept rejections or the dead silence of no response at all.

Every single one of us this morning talked about the number of venues and open calls we apply for regularly without being accepted. For me personally the track record is about twenty five percent acceptance. Yet every Monday and Thursday I spend a few hours scouring the internet looking for open calls to apply for, sending emails to galleries, or visiting venues and galleries in person in order to make a connection.

When we did roll around to the “Finding your voice” part of the conversation it was a mixed bag. The idea of “niching down”, the hot buzz phrase of the last few years was rebuffed by everyone with all of us siting examples of artists that never did and went on to have very successful careers working in a any number of mediums and reinventing their so called visual voice along the way. Yes some fell into a specific groove and didn’t deviate much from it. Others though worked in large varying swaths from painting to sculpture, to ceramics, to film, to photography, to collage, to… You get the point.

After an hour and a half, probably to much caffeine and some interesting side conversations that had nothing to do with anything we all drifted off to the rest of our day, but as I sit here in my studio this morning the conversation still lingers between my ears. I keep thinking about what has happened with my personal art journey over the years.

Here’s what I know has worked for me:

I never stopped. I’ve doing some form of artistic endeavor as long as I can remember and probably will until I leave this planet.

I don’t have a problem talking about my work at all with anyone or in front of anyone.

I focus on subject matter that has a specific meaning to myself and can explain why I chose it, how the medium I’m working in impacted it, how presentation relates to it, historical references and influences, what my goal for the work was etc.

I don’t rely on social media at all to promote or sell my work. I’ve never had any real success with it, so social media is simply a place for me to post things, and talk to what is probably a minimal audience (I have less than 250 followers on Instagram and don’t make much of an effort to grow that)

I look locally at venues that my work might fit in, but never push them to take me if I know their is little chance at this point. If they want me, they’ll find me. Right now I’m making connections.

I treat the business side like a business. The creative act is the fun part, but the business side is the necessary part. It’s why I spend time each week writing emails, applying to open calls, following up with vendors and fabricators, visiting galleries and other venues.

While I treat the business side like a business, I never create work specifically to sell. In other words I’m not chasing trends or styles that are currently popular online. Or creating work that that has been diluted in order to function as decor. I’m trying to stay true to my vision regardless if I think it could sell or not.

Those are just a few of the things that have kept me going, evolving, and chasing this dream.

OK, I’m leaving on a trip to Scotland, so no more long form posts for a couple of weeks. If you are following me on Substack or Threads I’ll be posting notes and photos from the trip. Maybe on Instagram as well if I remember to open the app. (Instagram’s not really front of mind these days).

For the past few months I have been debating whether or not to drop all social media. Well, daily activity with it not completely dropping all of it. I’m already off of Xitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Instagram is pretty much an after thought at this point and since I have less than 200 followers there it really does seem rather pointless to continue to use it. I never did TikTok or YouTube, and I dropped Vimeo when they started charging for basic functionality.

So that really leaves me here, with Substack which has been shifting steadily over the last two months becoming what feels like a mashup of a number of other platforms. In addition, since the giant cash infusion that Substack received a couple of months ago the focus of this platform seems to be shifting to video, celebrity posts, and pushing people that have large followings. I get it, it’s where the money is, but it makes it harder for the people with smaller audiences and no desire to make videos. So I’m contemplating dropping long form posts here, and adding a blog to the website I’m currently rebuilding.

If I make the transition to using the blog for long form posts coming out once a week, I’ll be sure to bring the current subscriber list from Substack so that anyone who wants to follow along can. Like I said though, I’m contemplating and haven’t quite made up my mind as of yet. Creating a blog does feel more natural to me, with organic growth and fewer distractions. And it won’t be my first rodeo with one. I wrote and managed a blog that focused on art, design, architecture, and illustration for over 10 years starting back in 2009. So we’ll see.

In the mean time a few updates.

The plexiglass project has currently stalled and I probably won’t pick it back up until after I get back from Scotland toward the end of the month. I’m having technical issues with lighting, and assembly. The optically clear vinyl affixed to the plexiglass sheets is working, so now it’s the engineering part over the art part.

In the last 90 days I have been accepted into a number of group exhibitions all of which are out of state. If you are in the Denver area you can see my work at The Lab on Santa Fe. I also have work on display at the CCAN Juried Competition in Abilene Texas, and three pieces up at “Truth Unveiled” at the Art League of Rhode Island. Locally two works will be up at “State of the Art” in Prairie Village Kansas for another two weeks. Right now I have work submitted to ten additional shows all of which have moved into the selection phase, so with fingers crossed I’m hoping for a few more acceptance letters before the end of the year.

As for publications, I was accepted into “Novum Artis issue 10” which is currently available here. And I will be featured in an international painting magazine that comes out in 2026. Unfortunately I can’t tell you who it is. They asked me to keep it quiet so they can do the big reveal themselves in December or January.

I’ve started another new creative process as well. I’ve begun mounting large format printed sheets to wood panels and then prepping them for secondary mediums to be applied. It’s been a bit tricky since almost all print work is water soluble to some extent. Because of this I’m mounting the work, then adding multiple coats of clear acrylic spray varnish to them to seal the surface and get them ready to accept acrylic and watercolor paint, colored pencils, chalk, conte crayon, ink etc. I like what is coming out of it and I think it’s something I’ll continue to pursue. It’s different than the work on Dibond or aluminum panels. With the addition of a large format printer to the studio, I’m hoping to start doing everything in house and not having to send out anything 24x36 inches or smaller.

Both the pieces shown in this post are using the new method.

As for the blog vs Substack or any other platform, I’ll keep everyone posted. I’m not in a rush, and I’m not doing anything until the portfolio site is completely rebuilt and live.