What Kinds of Shows to Promote Here?

[theaclark]

I recently submitted an event to the calendar section of the site. It is not for a jewelry exclusive event. Robert (our tireless administrator here) kindly posted it. He assumed jewelry must be significantly represented or I wouldn't have submitted it in the first place. 20% of the artists are jeweler/metal smiths.
Here is my reasoning for submitting;

I sent it because I think any opportunity to raise awareness about jewelry's presence in the museum/art world is important. Locally, I find that galleries believe New Jersey is a wasteland for talent. Plus the "is it craft or is it art?" argument has ghettoized jewelry for long enough.To counter this perspective, I included a quote from the catalog in which the curator speaks about this issue.

What do you think? Should the site focus on jewelry only shows? Or should it include other prominent shows where jewelry/metal work has been featured? "The 5th Cheongju International Crafts Biennale" in which Jon Ryan received the Silver Prize, comes to mind.

[theaclark]

Added to edit the above. Sorry for any confusion, Jon Ryan, not a member here, however, it is still a good example for my question.

Thanks,
Thea

[qwallis]

Hi Thea!
Calendar dates/events/shows don't need to be 100% jewellery; indeed the HCJ Project isn't 100% jewellery, the projects covers jewellery, contemporary silver and "small metal object art", but the majority of members will undoubtedly be jewellery related.
That is why I registered the domain as "handmade contemporary jewellery"; I didn't register HCJProject.com because the site is to help members reach the consumer and consumers search for the subject and not a project (keywords in the domain rank the highest).

The calendar (like all the site content) is not intended be viewed only "on site" but is for people (in this case, people who have a Google account, which millions of people already do, and thousands more daily) to "take with them". Then events and exhibitions added by site members will then automatically appear in the calendars of people who are interested in the subject matter.
That is why events should be "connected" with the subject matter of the HCJ Project.

There are literally thousands of "events pages" scattered around the web. Which are (or are not) updated with events connected with a specific gallery or a specific artist. That's all well and good, but wouldn't all that information presented in one place, split up geographically, where people can "take it (and future additions automatically) with them" be much more appealing to the consumer, and serve "Handmade Contemporary Jewellery" better?

Any members who want to add more than a few additions every couple of months are welcome to ask for direct write access, (that way no one person (me currently) will cayy the responciblility of adding submitted information).
If any members want to have the calendar(s) on their site, then just ask for a code snippet.

P.S. Jon is a site member, but hasn't added an artist profile on the main site yet. He said he'd be adding his shortly.

[qwallis]

.... Sorry for any confusion, Jon Ryan, not a member here, however, it is still a good example for my question.
Thanks,
Thea

Jon's page, which he added today