Timothy Buckwalter’s Year End Report

Image courtesy Timothy Buckwalter

Timothy Buckwalter, the artist who has been filling countless art inboxes for a year with his online exhibitions calls it quits this week. Sunday marks the last day of his ongoing series in which he invites professionals he likes to select recent drawings and paintings he’s completed for his weekly online exhibition and mailers. Art Fag City had the opportunity to select a few works for Buckwalter back in February, a process I liked quite a bit because removes all the aspects of curation I hate; No endless email correspondence, no making shipping arrangements, no worring about the availability of works. I only had to concern myself with the art.

Now, I don’t like everything the artist does — he creates far more work than most, so there’s bound to be a few misses — but he does make a few a jewels, and he’s created a system where feedback (at least in the form of curation) occurs on a weekly basis. Such engagement with the art community can be very empowering for the artist and if read Buckwalter’s recent account of how much more work he made, and how his involvement with the fine art community increased, you’ll see the results for yourself.

Unfortunately for those who enjoy reading about nitty gritty personal details, the artist provides no reason for the project’s closure in his final post. However, he does provide a year end report, which is worth looking at even if you missed all of his exhibitions. The pi charts and various graphs are nice, but some of the information they record is just insane. For example Buckwalter records the number of angry phone calls from galleries complaining that the price was too low at one. Frankly, the fact that anyone would be bothered enough by the prices an artist choses for their own work to call astounds me, but I guess a lack of better things to do inspires such poor behavior. Also enjoyable is the infographic displaying the feedback Buckwalter received over the course of the year. Nothing too unexpected shows up in this graph, but I note it because I like that the artist went to the trouble of recording it all.

As for Buckwalter’s future, the artist told me over email last week that he’s got a few new online projects in mind, though they remain developmental at this point. I guess we’ll just have to wait to find out more.