This week's New Yorker
double edition (Feb.16 & 23) has a stunning work by the critically
acclaimed but little-known comic strip artist Chris Ware (copy of one
of his oil paintings shown above). Taking up two full pages of the
magazine and not available online, this comic tells a complete,
poignant, soul-stirring story. Ware's brilliant artwork employs facial
expressions and body language so vivid the characters come to life, and
conveys passion, pathos, hope, and resignation with incredibly spare
text, line and colour. I hope Chris sees fit to allow it to be put
online (it's way too big and detailed for me to capture here, and would
need to be recast as a multiframe serial to work on-screen). In the
meantime, visit your magazine store and check it out -- pages 172-73.
Awesome.
On a similar subject, check out the videos of performance art using a
light table and sand (the artist uses his fingers to 'draw' in sand on
a light table, with the results projected on a screen and accompanied
real-time by an orchestra) on Phil Vassar's Just Playing blog.
I have just updated the full Directory of Active Salon Blogs.
You can download it in Excel format by clicking on the link at the top
of the right sidebar just below my e-mail link. It contains current
information on the owner and subject of each blog, plus current
sortable data on hits/month and inbound blog counts. Please send
me details of any missing and new Salon Blogs, and any errors in the
Directory. I promise to post any updates I receive to the Directory
spreadsheet regularly. Here are the summary statistics for the last
month:
Total
hits for the month were about 950 thousand, down 12%
from last month (the decrease was due entirely to a drop in hits for
two blogs). Of that total, 700 thousand hits (72%) went to the top 11
(7%) active blogs. Median hit count remains about 700 per month, or
about 20 hits per day.
Inbound blogs totaled about 3700, up 16% from last month,
with the top 11 active blogs accounting for almost exactly half of
them. Median number of inbound blogs remains at 7.
The approximate proportion of female Salon bloggers was 42%, the same percentage as a month ago.
Of the roughly 85 new Salon Blog numbers assigned this past
month (#3326-3411), about 30 made at least one post, and the following
12 appear to be posting regularly. That leaves the number of active
Salon Blogs at 160, almost unchanged from a month ago. Welcome to all
new Sloggers.
If I've missed your Salon Blog, or if you know of any active (posted
within the last month) active Salon Blogs not in the directory, please let me know.
MADE IN CANADA
trust your
instincts 
I have just updated the full 
