Blog Post #1: Vandalog "Living Walls 2012"

   The post that I read is from the Vandalog blog and it is called A long overdue post: Living Walls 2012. The author is RJ Rushmore. When I clicked on the link that brought me to the 'About' section of the blog I was directed to a page that has paragraphs about the contributing writers on the blog including RJ Rushmore. RJ is listed as the Editor-in Chief of this blog and the paragraph about him does not lend him much credit. In a bio paragraph, which he most likely had the opportunity to edit for himself, it states that he is a "20-something student who lives in Philadelphia," and "He hasn't been involved in street art very long," and he "has written a book." Perhaps he should look into changing his bio into something more professional and appropriate for an Editor-in-Chief, especially if he is going to plug his book. 

   After reading this blog post, I can safely say that I am not confident that his online writing skills are very strong, especially for someone who is listed as the Editor-in-Chief of several contributing writers.

 
   This blog post is about an annual festival that took place over five days this past August in Atlanta, GA. More than 30 artists from all over the world were brought to Atlanta to paint murals on the sides of buildings, houses and any other big surfaces that were available for large-scale street art. I was very excited about the content and the images that I had seen after reading the first sections of the blog post, however as I continued to read and scroll through the article I was really put off by the way this author explored the subject. 

   Mr. Editor-in-Chief Rushmore explains in his post that the program for this year's festival was different from previous years because the artists were predominantly female artists. The author writes in a way that suggests that he might be biased against female muralists and that he does not value them the same way that he values male muralists. He then shifts the focus from the artists to himself and offers us the consolation that although he was not impressed with the selection of artists, he was still invited to speak at the festival. (Oh joy! What a relief!)  He goes on to state that the artwork this year was not as good as it was in previous years and he seems to shamelessly expose his bias even further in this next paragraph:  

"While the murals weren’t as amazing on the whole as they were last year and the crowd of artists wasn’t nearly as rowdy (although that might have been a plus), this year’s Living Walls did bring some great work to Atlanta and really showed that there are some underrated female street artists and muralists out there who could be on the mural circuit as much as guys like Jaz or Roa. My hope and expecting is that the top-tier of artists from the conference will get more attention brought to their work thanks to Living Walls and some will start getting invited to a lot more mural festivals. As I’ve said in the past, I do not generally get excited to give artists preferential treatment based on them belonging to some underrepresented group, but I can see why an all-female Living Walls may have been the right move for this year even if the quality of the work did drop slightly."

   RJ Rushmore may have been able to improve this post if he would have taken time to gather some content for his blog post about the experience of one or two of the artists who created murals for the festival. The rest of the blog post is about how the author congratulates and thanks the volunteers and organizers for making the festival a positive experience for him. 

   I find that the author's work is amateur at best and I expect more from the editor-in-chief of a blog that has been online for more than four years. His writing is probably not scrutinized as much as other authors because this is an image-based blog that most people visit for the artistic content only. 

   I would not consider this author to be an expert on street art even though he touts himself as one. His bio reveals that he has only been interested in street art since 2008 and he does not seem to bring anything new to the table with this article. 

   Below is an image from the post of one of the murals from the festival by an artist named Olive47. I have so many questions that the author did not answer: What is the inspiration and significance of this mural for the artist? What building was this mural painted on? How would the artist describe their experience creating this mural? I think that there are so many beautiful murals on this blog post and the author has left so many questions unanswered.

  

Vandalog: "A long overdue post: Living Walls 2012", Sept 29th, 2012