We've recently received complaints from subscribers about phone solicitations purportedly from The Artist's Magazine that involve receiving gas cards for $300 and giving payment over the phone. In some cases, we've been told, the telemarketers were abusive. They operate under various names (you can see a list of bad agents on our corporate website). These people are not afilliated with The Artist's Magazine, and we are horrified with the way they've approached our customers.

You should renew your subscription only through our official subscription center in Palm Coast, FL, or online at www.artistsnetwork.com/magazines. Our mailed notices include The Artist's Magazine logo and ask that payment be made to The Artist's Magazine and be sent to Palm Coast, FL. Any requests for payment to someone else or any request that prompts you to send the response to a different address is likely fraudulent.

If you want to get in touch with The Artist's Magazine's customer service representatives, you can get in touch with them at 386/246-3370 or Subscriber Services, PO Box 42035, Palm Coast, FL 32142.

Got any questions about art, materials, blogging or the secrets of life? Ask Artists Network News! For an upcoming segment of the show, rather than ambush my coworkers, I'm going to answer reader mail.

Click here to e-mail me your questions and comments!

From Anna B. Francis, in the May 1992 issue of The Artist's Magazine:

The easiest and safest way to transport a very large watercolor when you're having it framed or photographed is to leave it stapled to the support on which it was stretched, and then to cover it with several layers of heavy-duty plastic and/or brown paper.

Learn more:

• Shipping Pastels (A Fragile Matter)
• Treating Bumps and Bruises

Book by its Cover (a fantastic art book blog) recently got lawyer Amy Everhart to answer a bunch of copyright questions. Some of the quandaries:

• What are the best ways to protect ourselves from being plagiarized when using the internet?
• What legal protections are given to an artist whose non-copyrighted images were stolen?
• Can an artist legally demand her images be removed from a website, even if it’s not being used for monetary gain?
• What are the steps you should take to confront someone who has been selling copies of your drawings online?
• When using photos for reference to create pieces of art or illustration, is there a percentage that has to be different from the original photo?
• How does infringement come into play in the realm of collage?
• What is the line between homage and infringement?
• At what point does an image become public domain?

Great questions and great answers. Click through to read the responses! If that's not enough, The Artist's Magazine's got a big stash of art law questions and answers, too.

Fleeting Encounter by Lindsay Scott (oil, 27x44), whose work appears in the National Museum of Wildlife Art's Miniatures and More Show & Sale.

Fall season out in the West always ushers in an array of impressive museum exhibitions. If you're thirsting for a really big show with great artists, here are some suggestions:

• For wildlife art lovers, the annual Miniatures and More Show & Sale takes place Sept. 18 at the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson, WY. The exhibit spotlights works by the genre's top painters and sculptors. This year Lindsay Scott, who creates compelling portraits of African creatures, is a featured artist.
• The Kolb Studio isn't exactly a museum, but it's not a gallery either. On Sept. 19, the studio, which sits on the south rim of the Grand Canyon and is operated by the nonprofit Grand Canyon Association, features works by 20 artists who are known for expressing the grandeur of this natural wonder.  
• The university town of Stockton, CA, is home to The Haggin Museum, a treasure trove of works by 19th- and early-20th-century European and American painters. But from Oct. 2 to Jan. 10, the museum will host contemporary landscape painters: members of the prestigious Plein Air Painters of America. The exhibit will brim with fantastic paintings of our country's national parks.
• In the Denver area, the Madden Museum of Art displays Windows to the Divine, a show with well-known painters, such as Scott Fraser, Albert Handell and Quang Ho, and their interpretations of spiritual paths, though not necessarily including religious or sacred subjects. The ecumenical event runs Oct. 3-23.
• Southern California's Laguna Art Museum hosts the 11th annual Laguna Beach Plein Air Painting Invitational Oct. 11-18. Join the painters at the opening and on the beach for breakfast and a Quick Draw contest.

Igor Koslovsky and Marina Sharapova, better known as Igor & Marina, are a husband-and-wife team that are on the cover of The Artist's Magazine's September issue. They collaborate on all their works, compositions that exemplify the tension between the figure and the ground.

You can read all about them in the September issue, but have a look at their work in this cool video:

From Christopher Schink, in the September 1999 issue of The Artist's Magazine:

To paint like J.M.W. Turner, emphasize the rhythmic movements within your subject to create a dramatic effect. Eliminate all whites from your paper by tinting it first with diluted, pure colors. But remember to restrict yourself to a range of very light to middle values. Create the effect of luminosity by contrasting clean colors against slightly darker, more neutral colors.

Learn more:

• Splash 10: Passionate Brushstrokes
• "J.M.W. Turner Combined the Real and Romantic"
• Exploring Watercolor

Virtually, of course. :) In the latest edition of Artists Network News, I show you what goes on in F+W Media HQ!

Three-time Academy Award nominee Joan Allen is channeling Georgia O'Keeffe in a new biopic produced by Sony Pictures Television. Georgia O'Keeffe airs Sept. 19 on the Lifetime network, but Santa Fe will roll out the red carpet Aug. 28 for its premiere at the Lensic Performing Arts Center in the heart of the city.

According to a press release from the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum in Santa Fe, the movie revisits the tumultuous relationship between O'Keeffe and her husband, photographer Alfred Stieglitz, played by Jeremy Irons. The biopic hones in on their interdependence and O'Keeffe's struggle to establish her own identity in New York and New Mexico, eventually her permanent home.

Sony and Lifetime, I've got a hot idea for a movie about the art world. How about Maynard & Dorothea, a biopic documenting the complex relationship between western landscape painter Maynard Dixon and photographer Dorothea Lange, set against the backdrop of San Francisco in the 1920s?

From Lin Seslar, in the February 1987 issue of The Artist's Magazine:

When you're painting a sunset on location, you have to move and think fast. To make sure I get all the information I need to create a good painting, I do pencil sketches and make color notes, then supplement this information by taking a few slides. Back in the studio, my combined references allow me to re-create the scene's glorious colors with ease.

Learn more:

• Artist's Digital Photo Reference: Landscapes
• Paint Along With Jerry Yarnell, Volume 8: Capturing Color
• The Artist's Magazine 2008 Issues On CD

It's essential for artists to cultivate an online presence—how else will galleries, editors and buyers find you? Here's a little taste of the helpful advice from our next online seminar, Create an Online Presence: How to Use Websites, Blogs and Social Networking to Enhance Your Art Career. If you're a blogging beginner, heed these rules:

• Post at least once a week—but several times a week is even better
• Let readers get to know you
• But don't get too personal
• Use lots of pictures!
• Always spell-check
• Add other art blogs to your blogroll
• Post comments on the other blogs you read

In addition to online access to the recording of the session, everyone who registers for this seminar will receive a free copy of The Complete Guide To Selling Your Art Online.

I'm going to be presenting the seminar live today at 1 p.m. EST. Click here to register. Hope you can make it!

Loveland, CO, is a sleepy town north of Denver for most of the year. But during the second week in August, the place turns into a swelling sea of sculptors—some 400 artists from around the country swim into town bearing bronze, stone, ceramic and wood pieces. They range in subject matter from contemporary kinetic towers to tiny, funky frogs.

One of the pleasures of my annual trek to Sculpture in the Park and the Loveland Sculpture Invitational Show & Sale is to discover the artists who have taken interesting new directions.

This year on our first stop of the day, we meet up with Josh Wiener, a young Colorado artist who is showing Once Again (right)—a step away from his earlier musical instruments forms. “I’m exploring the intersection of urban and natural environments,” Josh says. By placing a living tree on the top of a sculpted wood structure, his intent is to convey the cyclical nature of materials—everything becomes something else.

Soon after our conversation with Josh, the familiar stone and bronze figures of another Colorado artist, Kendra Fleischman, pop into view. Drawing closer, we notice a new element in her work. In Looking Glass (above), a woman holds a mirror that streams video, including 1950s commercials for beauty parlors and fashion advice telling women how to dress. Very cool.

Finally, the always lively Kevin Box from Santa Fe, known for his origami bronze crane sculptures, couldn’t wait to show us his latest work, titled Victoria's Dress—a flowing bronze breeze of a frock that a modern dancer might wear. Kevin reports proudly, "I sold two of them."

There are a lot of cool people in Portland, but not many as cool as Kate Bingaman-Burt, who I wrote about once upon a time (in the picture at right, she's on the right, I'm on the left). She puts up daily drawings of her purchases at Obsessive Consumption, and through the end of August, you can see a big show of her work at Reading Frenzy in downtown Portland!

I was stoked to see it while I was in town, and I also got to experience the Portland Zine Symposium, where Kate had a table, as did her graphic design students from Portland State University. Pictures follow...

If you're a fan of independent publishing, art and comics, Reading Frenzy is a must-see destination in Portland.



Kate is showing years of drawings of her purchases, and has a bunch of zines and buttons for sale, as well as larger prints!



The scene at the Portland Zine Symposium!

From Lewis Barrett Lehrman, in the June 1994 issue of The Artist's Magazine:

Make a one-color still life painting. Gather an assortment of objects that are the same color and compose a still life on the same-colored background. Then use it to explore all the nuances of color, shadow and form.

Learn more:

• Oil Painting: The Workshop Experience
• Brilliant Color: Painting Vibrant Outdoor Scenes
• Confident Color: An Artist's Guide to Harmony, Contrast and Unity

Finally got around to uploading all my pics from my trip out to the Pacific Northwest, and there's just too much good stuff for one blog post! Check back Friday for part II.

I spent what feels like half of my vacation waiting around in Chicago's O'Hare airport. Luckily, there was plenty of stuff to keep me occupied, like the neon light tunnel between terminals:



Once I finally got to Portland, I went to a lot of my favorite places, like the Alberta Arts District (but I'm utterly bummed about the demise of Office's bricks-and-mortar store), the Portland Art Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Craft. Saw this kooky shrine suspended from a light pole in Alberta:



Guardino Gallery had a show of works by Shalene Valenzuela and Kelly Neidig, who I've actually been a fan of for a while! I was really tempted to take home one of Neidig's expressionist landscapes:



I also went to the Oregon coast for a vacation-within-a-vacation. Being a land-locked yankee, I think the ocean is such an incredible thing. While in Yachats I ran into this strapping mural:



Enough said.

I got this little promo pack last week from a new venture in New York City. The 6x6 Gallery is opening in October with a gallery full of 6x6 works of art sent in from artists all over the world.

And you can participate! Their little happy-meal-size submission package includes a canvas, promo cards and a box to mail your work in. It's $40 (or $20 if you're an NYC local). You set the price, it goes on view for a month at the gallery in the East Village, and you get 80 percent of the sale. The first deadline is September 15! I think I might try it myself.

A magnificent obsession. That’s the best way to describe Herb and Dorothy Vogel’s passion for art. The New York City couple is the subject of "Herb & Dorothy", a documentary currently playing around the country. At the end of the Denver screening I attended, the audience clapped. What’s incredible about the Vogels is that the duo has amassed more than 4,000 pieces of contemporary art on a shoestring budget. Herb, now in his 80s, was a postal clerk, and Dorothy, in her 70s, was a librarian. They lived on her salary and spent his on art. By the way, they inhabit a one bedroom apartment where they appear to have no interest in furniture. The film shows a kitchen table, stacks of books, some turtles and a cat. And art is stuffed everywhere else.

The Vogels recently gave the entire collection to the National Gallery of Art, but the curators could only take 1,000 pieces. So, what’s happening with the rest? The amazing Vogels are giving 50 of their pieces to each of the 50 states. Out here in the West, their cache is headed to 13 museums, including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Portland Art Museum, and the Seattle Art Museum. To see where the Vogels' treasure trove is headed in your state, visit the Vogel 50x50 website. As a film critic in Denver says, now there's a little Herb and Dorothy for all of us.