Often, with understanding art, the less said, the more direct the experience. I notice that there is an almost sterile environment in the websites of most serious creative people. As if the curriculum vitae and the work itself says enough, there is no attempt to explain, enhance or break down. Such communication left sparse allows the viewer/participant to explore on their own terms. And formally trained artists already “get” it, no words required.

But, I have an issue with that. Why? Because there are segments of society, such as health insurances, tax information, protocols for paperwork, etc. that I don’t understand save for base level acquaintance. And when I search for information, it astounds me that more often than not, the information sources have a high-level assumption that I already know what they are talking about. I have to keep insisting that I’m really stupid about these things in order to gain a satisfactory answer to a simple question.

And it came to my attention in 2005-06, when as an “artist-in-residence” with a local program, given a public space to work and show, that many of my visitors were as clueless about art as I was about things like taxes, probably because of the finance cuts over the last decades to art edu in public schools. I found myself more and more having to talk about art in ways that people with no background education could understand.

And so, if I communicate over-the-top in terms of modern approaches to showing art in a website, it is because I no longer can assume that my visitors understand the basics I take for granted.