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

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

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

Writing

My pages