User:Artdoofus

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When I retired last December 2018, after teaching art in High School, and then community college in the Greater Washington, DC area for nearly five decades, I "re-discovered" Wikipedia (a handful of years back I created and edited a lot of art and art history articles, but that was a couple of PCs ago and several dozen forgotten passwords ago...) and suddenly I had this interest in placing deserving and marginalized artists from the greater region into this great online repository of data. Thanks to several key editors, I've re-learned a lot in a few months, and now retirement is no longer boring.

I've also read a LOT of artists' pages/articles in Wikipedia and learned a lot from their pages - there are also a LOT of head-scratchers that do not meet, even remotely, the requirement for significant coverage in independent, reliable sources, or awards, etc., in other words the notability requirements for WP:ANYBIO, WP:GNG, WP:NBIO, WP:NARTIST -- but staying out of nominating anyone out for deletion yet, as time is the only true juror of presence in the world of fine arts.

In the late 1990s I had a little time in my hands and decided to go to law school - so I'm also technically a lawyer - but then after a couple of years of practicing law, I made and saved a little mint (enough to be comfortable), and decided to go back to teaching. I'm now looking at volunteering at Washington Area Lawyers for the Arts.

My interests[edit]

Artists, artwork, museum, art galleries, art fairs, art festivals, artsy movies, artsy people, art magazines, art critics - get the drift? Annual trip to Virginia Beach for two weeks in the sand when they have the Virginia Beach Boardwalk Art Show. I have also driven down to Miami for the Art Basel fairs since 2005 - no beach time there, but lots of art!

I've also dabbled in art glass, just for fun, and took some ad hoc lessons over the years - it is really hard! But then nearly everyone in my immediate family has a piece of "art glass" as a present from me of some sort or other!

Writing[edit]

I wrote art criticism both as a hired columnist and as a freelancer for several decades; contributed to a few books - now retired from all that as well.

My interests[edit]

Writing[edit]

My pages[edit]