Assignment 4: Personal Artist Website Assignment Due Friday April 16 at 6pm (20%)

 

This assignment will have people develop their website for  specific audience members and should involve the following: 

Mechanics of the Website:

- Clear Intent

- Actionable Items (Develop items on the website in terms ease in which people navigate through the website but is still interesting and unique for them)

- Consider the written and visual language in relation to the technology and the overall layout of the website. (Layout will be determined primarily by website template)

- This artist website assignment is about showcasing your work and ideas as an artist (and also potentially showcasing your work and ideas as curators and/or art writers).

Demographics (Audience) for Personal Artist Website:

Curators/Arts Administrators

Art Critics

Artists

Art Historians

Art Buyers*

Art Appreciators (art educated and non-art educated people)

Addressing the above demographics is mandatory but there is also the option of informing the following audience as art appreciators:

Friends, Fans, Family and General Public.

Website Menu Requirements:

1A) Bio: (100 - 150 words) In third person. One or two sentences summarizing your art practice (these sentences can be taken from artist statement) and summary of your CV.  (Some websites will have the bio and cv on the same page, and sometimes instead of the heading "Bio" artists will simply use the heading "About")

1B) CV: List items on the CV which are only art related such as: Education - BFA Honours  School of Art, University of Manitoba, art workshops, employed by or volunteering for arts organizations, exhibitions, published writings or work, art collections, art school awards and grants, school of art student council, any other art practice activities. List items with headings and in chronological order starting from the most recent exhibition, etc.

2) Artist Statement:  (250 - 350 words) Once again the artist statement is a summary and history of your (recent - ish*) work. Statement should correlate with all or most images and examples of work on website.

Very import to discuss the connections between the visual language in the work and their themes/metaphors. Every choice in terms of creating visual form, subject matter and the process has the potential to mean something. In many ways the artist statement is about discussing the chosen visual languages and process and how those choices of visual language and process specifically communicate those themes/metaphors.

Some people have a large and diverse body of work which may require an artist statement that discusses all their work in general and then will require the use of separate texts that are shorter which address specifics about different sub-categories of work listed in the website menu.

3A) Images of Work:  Requires one or more of the following: Stills, Video, Sculpture/3D Work, Installations, Commissions, etc. Check other artist websites to get ideas how they organize their work and menu on their homepage) 

3B) Professional Quality of Images: Must demonstrate proper format, cropping, exposure and resolution. There can be a rare exception to proper format, exposure and resolution but intent must be clear and once again ideas should connect with the visual language of the work. 

For each work state: Title, medium(s), dimensions and date

For videos/animation: Title, play-time and date

Categories for Work: 

Those sub-categories of your work could be theme based or medium based. If the website is set up by different projects perhaps there could be statements for the different projects

Other arts related menu items could include: curating projects, art writing or media coverage.

Copy Right Issues:

If copy right is a concern people could add the description of each work with their name and the copyright symbol after each image.

Criteria for Evaluating Assignment:

Unique and Innovative characteristics of website

Clear relationship between texts (artist statement and bio) and work (images/video/time based work)

Clarity and over all professionalism of website.

Deadline for Assignment: 
Instructor must receive an email with link to website by Friday April 6 at 6:00pm

Email Instructions for Assignment:
Please email instructor at Derek.Brueckner@umanitoba.ca

In subject of email please put last name, then first name then website assignment.

Sharing Website with Classmates (Optional):

If people wish as an option people may share their website with classmates by putting a link of website in Discussion Thread on UM Learn, and/or email link to classmates.