When I originally published TAA-95 a year and a half ago, I expected this blog to serve as a way for the artists participating in the Toledo Area Artists 95 exhibit at the Toledo Art Museum to keep in touch and to spread news on their art exhibits, projects, professional accomplishments and the like.  It turns out that I vastly over-estimated the appetite of my TAA artist friends for self promotion! Either because they are way too modest or just don’t have an appetite for verbal self-expression, very few posts have been forth-coming.  I find I am writing about regional artists and art issues pretty much on my own.  That’s not a bad thing, just different from what I intended at the outset.

On the other hand, I find that the more I express my opinion and share information about art events in Southeast Michigan and Northeast Ohio,   the more I enjoy it. Recently, with a bit of  (perhaps ill-considered) encouragement from talented arts writer and Kresge Fellow Sarah Rose Sharp, I’ve started to cover regional art news in more detail.  I’m not writing because I’m a great writer (though I hope to improve over time) but because I don’t think there is enough coverage of visual artists and the arts in our region.

To reflect the more personal nature of this blog going forward, I will be making some changes in its format.  Soon the domain name will change from taae95artists.wordpress.com  to rustbeltarts.com, and I’ll be tweaking  the home page appearance. Other than that, those of you following the blog won’t notice much difference (except I will be posting even more frequently).  I still hope to hear from the artists in last year’s Toledo Art Museum exhibit whenever they have something to report, but in future I will be the sole author on this blog.