Blogs on Blogs
Profile: Daily Art Fixx
The Daily Art Fixx, or DAF is a blog with commentary on Art, “A little art — everyday” (http://www.dailyartfixx.com). Started in April of 2009 by Wendy Campbell, a Canadian artist with a background in communications and design marketing. She is Co-Chair of the Cambridge Art Festival. Alongside her is Susan Benton, whose background in communication and retail directorships at prominent Canadian theaters and art galleries. Together they partnered to launch the Daily Art Fixx “To educate and inspire.” With their background in toe, their passions for art and love for the medium is prevalent. Their pursuit to showcase the expansive visual art genre has allowed their blog to grow further than they had anticipated. The Daily Art Fixx includes artist profiles, most art genres such as illustration, mixed media, sculpture and video among others.
A typical post on the Daily Art Fixx seeks to showcase a particular artists and/or movement in the art world. I gravitated towards Wendy Campbell’s post, due to her consistent theme of Art History. I read some of her current articles on Francis Bacon, Pablo Picasso and Roy Lichtenstein to gage her voice and writing style. Easy to read, Wendy Campbell does not over complicate her writing with academic description. Instead she keeps with their mission to share art — for education and inspiration describing Roy Lichtenstein’s altering place as having “reinvigorated the American art scene”.
Campbell’s writing focuses on content and informing the reading on facts to help broaden one’s understanding. This informative writing style is evident as in her article, “Pablo Picasso: 1881–1973”, where she outlines with detail the progress of Picasso’s working style: Blue Period (1901–1094), Rose Period (1905–1907), Primitivism (1906–1908), Analytic Cubism (1909–1912), Synthetic Cubism (1912–1919) and Classicism and Surrealism (1916–1922). The different phases of Picasso’s career is well documented in art history books, journals and articles, but Campbell provides a quick easy and digestible overview of it. This is an informative way to educate the reader to knowledge, well might be common in the art world, Campbell does not assume the reader already knows.
It should also be noted that their posts are quite regular, updating their blog every other day, if not daily. This is what adds to the richness of this blog, making the posts accessible in a timely pace to keep up with our quickly consumptive culture. Having started their blog in 2009, the page is very tasteful and maintains a layout that lends itself more to showcasing the artwork, rather than needless space.
The content provided on the Daily Art Fixx is open and adventurous to the art lover and the art student as well. They accept submissions, which invites the avid reader to engage even further. Running contests and giveaways, as well as maintaining an extremely entertaining Artist Birthday Calendar, the limits to what one can gain is beyond reach. It makes this particular blog a pleasure to read and a joy to dive into. Unfortunately, I was unable to locate the Daily Art Fixx readership stats, however, you are more than capable of Tweeting, Instagramming, and utilizing other forms of social media to propel the posts on this blog. This encourages the capabilities to share and expand the blog’s reach beyond that of their own site traffic.
The Daily Art Fixx is as described by Wendy Campbell and Susan Benton, “A little art — everyday” and as “A way to share art — for education and inspiration” (DAF website). For education, DAF is a great way to open up ideas on the topics of art in order to further one’s understanding. The DAF is not a scholarly periodical, nor does it try to be. But the Daily Art Fixx can help readers open up these difficult topics that could help point one’s research down the right or possibly unexpected path.
