Adaweb
URL: http://adaweb.com/
Category: Art
Issue: 0796
Content Quality: Excellent
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Excellent
Site of the Month: Yes
Author: Heidi Swanson
The instant I ventured into the Adaweb realm my sensory overload meter hit the red line. This site establishes a much needed platform for Web specific content in which contemporary artists can discourse with the Internet community. As platforms go, it¹s a rather lofty one, so you may want to don your highbrow reading specs and grab an encyclopedia of obscure references before climbing aboard. Adaweb currently serves up six segments featuring an impressive variety of heavy-hitting content. The first level, *Project * houses works created specifically for the site, while *Influx* becomes the digital display case for works that exist in real space. Not only does Adaweb feature a vast array of artists, but it presents their work in a clean, even elegant, manner. Navigate seamlessly from Julia Scher's coldly voyeuristic *Securityland*, right into a warm, peppy, Armani-models-visit-the-Emerald City-type of piece about love as perceived by Group Z, for instance. The clean design and site architecture of Adaweb help make the site more hospitable to an ever changing guest register and the site designers have used HTML to visually optimize the layout without crowding in too many bells and whistles or overshadowing the content. And for those browsing with slower connections, the creators have made a conscious effort to keep their page sizes down to a minimum. Hot and cold, soft and hard, glaring and subtle, Adaweb encompasses the entire spectrum in one cohesive design providing an electronic forum for experimental artists to display the fruits of their labor. It¹s a dynamic achievement not only worth the first visit, but, as with all the best zines, one to bookmark for future visits.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 18

Goya
URL: http://www.primenet.com/~image1/goya/goya.html
Category: Art
Issue: 0396
Content Quality: Excellent
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Excellent
Site of the Month: No
Author: Karina Vasser
Francisco Goya led classical painting into the modern world with a unique and ever-changing style. This site, devoted to the works of Goya, is also unique. It lacks the typical barrage of hyperlinks to miscellaneous Web resources, feedback loops, and advertisements. Instead, it¹s a stunning display of the artist¹s works. Each page is accompanied by a well -written biographical note. The works are presented in chronological order to demonstrate Goya¹s evolution. (Goya lost his hearing in 1792 and his mood and paintings took on an increasing aura of dark despondence.) Very well done.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 18

Welcome to ArtsLink
URL: http://pathfinder.com/@@sRMXEnH1hAMAQIlr/twep/artslink/
Category: Art
Issue: 0596
Content Quality: Excellent
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Excellent
Site of the Month: No
Author: Bonnie J. Burton
With all the independent art sites on the net, Time Warner Electronic Publishing finally took the creative plunge and returned from the underground with ArtsLink. ArtsLink provides an Artists-in-Residence section that displays a wide range of material, including abstract computer algorithm images, controversial posters about racism, colorful charcoal sketches of women, and QuickTime VR multimedia pieces. Read about projects in development, and catch up on cultural issues in the Morfogen and Associates News section. ArtsLink also wants visitors to spearhead its bulletin board discussions on topics such as the influence of AIDS in art, and performance art advice.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 18

Picture Project Gallery
URL: http://www.itp.tsoa.nyu.edu/~student/picture_projects/
Category: Art
Issue: 0496
Content Quality: Excellent
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Excellent
Site of the Month: No
Author: Shel Kimen
Beautiful and immensely moving, this site serves as a photo documentary of the horrors and suffering that has consumed the scope of all life in Bosnia. The archive contains dozens of astonishing, gut-wrenching and heart-warming photographs with simple (and painfully confrontational) commentary, laced along margins as captions to photos. It¹s an outstanding Web site to visit, especially on days of deep melancholia. Guaranteed to instigate introspection.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 18

Designlink
URL: http://www.designlink.com
Category: Art
Issue: 0496
Content Quality: Excellent
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Excellent
Site of the Month: No
Author: Shel Kimen
Here¹s your ³Online Resource for Creative Professionals.² It¹s well-designed and keenly organized, and offers to build networks among the denizens of the design industry, manufacturers, and other Internet resources. Complete with a portfolio display area, job bulletin board and a yellow pages directory, Designlink is definitely a good starting point for illustrators, photographers, interior designers and anyone else peering over creative visual edges.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 18

DesignOnline
URL: http://www.dol.com/
Category: Art
Issue: 0496
Content Quality: Excellent
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Excellent
Site of the Month: No
Author: Shel Kimen
Artistically speaking, this is one of the most competent looking resource sites on the net. And as far as content goes, it¹s the cat¹s meow. Design Online is home to pages and pages of design-related everything: news, professional and non-profit organization info, discussion areas, files, fonts and links galore to keep designers, architects and artists connected both within the wired world, and outside the digital crusade. Many gold stars for this impressive accomplishment.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 18

may you live in interesting times
URL: http://adaweb.com/
Category: Art
Issue: 0496
Content Quality: Excellent
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Excellent
Site of the Month: No
Author: Shel Kimen
The momentum of this site swings far and wide with energy, creativity and an overwhelmingly large collection of images, artwork, and ideas. AdaWeb fills its server with digital exhibitions, examples of creative HTML design, and flurries of abstract concepts. At first, you¹ll need to trust your intuition to click with reckless abandon (few options are clearly indicated, though many are presented). But, as you find yourself pouring through the site, it becomes apparent that this sort of random access works well with all the presentations, and adds to its enjoyment factor. Stunning creativity.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 18

Zero Tolerance
URL: http://Zero.Tolerance.org/zt/ztfront
Category: Art
Issue: 0496
Content Quality: Excellent
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Excellent
Site of the Month: No
Author: Shel Kimen
Zero Tolerance is a hodgepodge of creative efforts spanning digital media, photography, and philosophical goo ‹ all rolled into a cool-looking but kind of messy package. It¹s hard to nail down the site¹s intentions, other than it¹s a place to store ideas, however chaotically. Perhaps no other point is required. The images are sometimes spectacular and sometimes lacking, but overall, the site is entertaining, thoughtful and worth visits from curious types.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 18

The Digital Photography Exhibit
URL: http://www.bradley.edu/exhibit95/
Category: Art
Issue: 0896
Content Quality: Excellent
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Excellent
Site of the Month: Yes
Author: Lauren Guzak
In much the same way that The National Endowment for the Arts will always be the victim (or benefactor, for that matter) of the changing tides of public policy, so the Web can be targeted by those who wish to restrict its contents. For the moment, though, it continues to be a forum where myriad art forms can be published for a relative pittance. An exceptional example what the Web can do in this respect is the Digital Photography Exhibit, a juried show of some 45 images created by artists working in digital photography. The original Exhibit in 1994 was one of the first art galleries to be presented online. It consisted of both the Web site and the actual show at the Art Guild gallery in Peoria. Defined by the jury as "a two-dimensional image which originated in a lens-imaging device (that) was then brought to completion on a computer," digital photography includes images originally captured by analog film cameras, video cameras, still-video cameras, digital cameras, and 3D-scanners. The artwork itself is diverse, challenging, and representative of a wide range of techniques and artistic visions. If you like the work well enough to put it on your wall, you¹ll be interested to know that many of the prints are available for purchase. The quality of the images from the 38 artists represented is, in and of itself, enough to recommend this site. But more impressive than its parts is the site as a whole. The functionality and background design are engaging yet unobtrusive from start to finish, and the technology is never invasive of the overall experience; headers, toolbars, and buttons are well-placed, there to let you easily navigate the site, not distract you from it. The ³space² that houses the digital artwork was finely crafted by three students-- Kevin Reynen, Danny Jacobs, and Dave Dreghorn--as an independent study project at Bradley University. (Reynen, Jacobs, and Dreghorn also created the PhotoShock v1.1 "Digital Fauxtography" image manipulation project. It¹s a funny, interactive Shockwave piece with Bob Dole and Bill Clinton at center stage behind podiums. Change the backdrops and/or their looks--from a hippy Clinton to a pea-green Dole-- for some amusing images.) Now in its third year, the 1994 and -95 exhibits are still available for viewing. Enjoy.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 18

The Holocaust Memorial
URL: http://wahoo.netrunner.net/~holomem/ Art
Category: Art
Issue: 0996
Content Quality: Excellent
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Excellent
Site of the Month: No
Author: Karen Wickre
Located in Miami, Florida, the Holocaust Memorial is an outdoor space with several sculptures for contemplation. The online tour is very simple, very moving: there¹s just one greyscale photo per page accompanied by a quote or descriptive commentary. Several of the sculptures are stark representations suffering humanity; there¹s also a garden, a path, a small, domed building for meditation. Using a Java push, the creators built several on-screen warnings (from the ³Ministry of Information Control²) that lead to a page of other Holocaust resources on the Web. A thought-provoking experience.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 18

Musei Vatican
URL: http://www.christusrex.org/www1/vatican/O-Musei.html/
Category: Art
Issue: 1096
Content Quality: Excellent
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Excellent
Site of the Month: No
Author: Daniel Alarcon
I came to this site and found the "Truth and Meaning of Human Sexuality"--according to the Pope, who, if memory serves, has taken a vow of chastity and remains as innocent as the day he was born. Hmm. Contradictions notwithstanding, this is a great site to surf. For the pious among us, there's daily news updates from the Holy See, all the latest papal ecunemicals, plus news from around the world. Take a virtual tour of the Vatican. Search through photo archives of everything from sacred art from some of the world's oldest churches to shots from China's Tianemen Square Uprising. If you need a reason to skip Sunday mass, look no further. Amen.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 18

Graf Cafe
URL: http://www.tiac.net/users/phage/
Category: Art
Issue: 1196
Content Quality: Excellent
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Excellent
Site of the Month: No
Author: Gary Barker
Graf Cafe is targeted at graffiti fans. It features more than 300 photographs of graffiti from Boston neighborhoods, organized by location. There's also a surprisingly polished and sometimes wry FAQ to explain the vocabulary (tagging, bombing, piecing), acronyms and subculture, as well as recent developments such as the emerging sticker movement. The splash page features sophisticated 3D graphics and HTML "onMouseOver"fun. Links to eight pro-graffiti and two anti-graffiti sites. Their philosophy: "A writer is not a petty vandal, he neither smashes car windows nor overturns gravestones; a writer is an artist."
Overall Rating (out of 18): 18

The World of Allen Toney
URL: http://webpages.marshall.edu/~jtoney/
Category: Art
Issue: 1196
Content Quality: Excellent
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Excellent
Site of the Month: No
Author: Emily Soares
Allen Toney is hailed as one of the most innovative computer artists of his day. But it goes further than that. Nightmares, day sweats, bad acid, and underdone potatoes are as much a part of the scenery here as neo-classical Catholicism and iconography rendered as only a recovering Papist could render it. The images are, by turns, rich and oily--liquid mercury in a twister--and mythical/mathematical. Take a walk through the gallery. If you can take it, ³Dream Deeper,² if not, you can ³Wake Up² at any time. One can only imagine what Toney sees when he closes his eyes in the dark.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 18

aRtsLab
URL: http://sgva-serv1.ucsd.edu/~art-slab/
Category: Art
Issue: 1196
Content Quality: Excellent
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Excellent
Site of the Month: No
Author: Emily Soares
ARtsLab, UCSD's Visual Arts Department site, offers online exposure to a host of artists, visions, and themes. The Institute of Sociometry page, housing a rich variety of subchurches, secret societies, and guerrilla artists, is the aRtsLab high point, with links to the San Francisco Cacophony Society and the Luther Blisset Home Page. Learn about Neoists, Psychogeography, and the decline of Venice. You can search the aRtsLab index by artist or subject. How 'bout Apparatus Luscious or Dadatorial? Thought-provoking projects are presented with a dose of self-indulgence, the inevitable mixed bag of art school. Well worth the visit.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 18

Africa: The Art of a Continent
URL: http://artnetweb.com/guggenheim/africa/index.html
Category: Art
Issue: 1196
Content Quality: Excellent
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Excellent
Site of the Month: No
Author: Emily Soares
Africa: The Art of a Continent is an exhibition celebrating "the extraordinary contribution of the African continent to the world's visual culture." Don't despair if you can't get to the Guggenheim to see it in time; the site alone would be worth the price of admission. An interactive map takes you to each region in Africa, discussing its artistic characteristics in particular. In-depth descriptions tell as much about African history as its art, and photographs make this almost as rich as a walk through. "Africa in New York," the citywide portion of the exhibit, includes photography, film, music, dance, symposia, and lectures. It¹s a beautifully designed site with engaging text. Hang out here and learn something.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 18

ZoneZero
URL: http://www.zonezero.com
Category: Art
Issue: 1296
Content Quality: Excellent
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Excellent
Site of the Month: No
Author: Patrick Joseph
The name is symbolic: ³Zone² in reference to the time-honored photographic technique known as ³The Zone System². ³Zero² as in the nil component of binary code. The idea is to use the Web site as a place to confront the transformation of photography from the analog mode to the digital one. Semantics aside, ZoneZero takes a sensible approach to the new technology, embracing it without forgetting its subject. You won¹t find any of the baubles and gimmicks so common to Web design here, just good photography. The work showcased at ZoneZero consists entirely of photo essays, as opposed to mere portfolios. Numerous photographers display their musings and images in understated exhibitions, each collection exploring a theme or place through the camera lens. The general orientation is predominantly Hispanic, with images of *barrios* on both sides of the border, from Joe Rodriquez¹s starkly journalistic *expose* on gang life in East L.A. to Kent Klitches¹ ³Street kids in Mexico City². Not all of the work is so disturbing (don¹t miss the almost surreal ³Meditations on Mexico² by Marianna Yampolsky), nor does it all straddle the Rio Grande. A few collections do focus on other places: Lars Tunbjork ruminates on the spiritual bankruptcy of an affluent Sweden; Seydou Keita¹s portrait studio is in Mali, West Africa; and the colorful, Almodovaresque compositions of Marcos Lopez hail from Buenos Aires, the most European city in the Americas. All the photographs are accompanied by commentary from the artist. And, thankfully, the words tend to dignify the work, rather than spoil it with a lot of overindulgent hoo haw (as is too often the case when visual artists talk about what they do). Marcos Lopez won me over with his candid introduction to his collection,³Argentinian Pop². ³This is the never ending search for identity,² he writes, ³in a country that was built with people that came off the ships. The tango we have inside. To reflect the double discourse of Modernity. All this I try to show in my photographs. Besides that, now I'm taking pictures for fun and to exorcise the pain because my girl left me." As I said early on, Web design is secondary here: depending on your orientation, the backgrounds are either dull or unobtrusive. For me, it¹s the content‹the amount and the quality thereof‹that make ZoneZero a winner. Editor, Pedro Meyer, deserves credit for putting the emphasis there first. With some refinements, this site could be among the very best of its kind.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 18

Richard Downs
URL: http://www.earthlink.net/~downsart/
Category: Art
Issue: 0696
Content Quality: Good
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Excellent
Site of the Month: No
Author: Bonnie J. Burton
For the best honey go to the bee hive. For the best art go to The Hive, the virtual studio of illustrator Richard Downs. See both abstract illustrations and smooth 3D design that Downs was commissioned to do for such big names as Disney, Apple computers, and Business Week magazine. The dark tale, "The Masque of the Red Death," is also illustrated by Downs in a graphic novel form online.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 17

Mythopoeia
URL: http://www.myth.com/mythopoeia/mythopoeia1.html
Category: Art
Issue: 0696
Content Quality: Good
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Excellent
Site of the Month: No
Author: Bonnie J. Burton
Enter the realm of morbid Bible tales where John the Baptist is a decapitated head surrounded in fruit and Jesus glows in the dark on a neon cross. Mythopoeia mutates myth into digital emotion and sensory satisfaction. Aside from Biblical characters, the site illustrates bios of the Furies, vampires, sea nymphs, Sleeping Beauty, Bird of Paradise and more. Real life needs to be this artistic. BLUE LIGHT
Overall Rating (out of 18): 17

Seattle's Center on Contemporary Art
URL: http://www.subpop.com/coca/
Category: Art
Issue: 0696
Content Quality: Good
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Excellent
Site of the Month: No
Author: Bonnie J. Burton
A large case of pink plastic found objects would normally be found in the "free" box at a garage sale, but at Seattle¹s Center on Contemporary Art it¹s a mixed media gallery installation. Every subject from the O.J. Simpson trials to portraits of Oscar Wilde are captured in paint, plaster, metal, and sometimes even plastic junk. Of the artists featured, CoCA focuses on a mishmash of popular art scenesters such as the Survival Research Laboratories and Hernandez brothers, as well as the more obscure folks.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 17

High Museum of Art
URL: http://isotropic.com/highmuse/highhome.html
Category: Art
Issue: 0696
Content Quality: Good
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Excellent
Site of the Month: No
Author: Bonnie J. Burton
Atlanta isn¹t just the home for the 1996 Summer Olympics, but also it¹s considered the grande casa of African, American, contemporary, decorative, European art, and photography at The High Museum of Art. The museum features more than 10,000 objects of art but the online site only has a limited number photos and brief descriptions of artifacts and paintings. Most of the content has more to do with the museum¹s services than the actual exhibits.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 17

Design Vision
URL: http://w3.one.net/~mtgarvin/
Category: Art
Issue: 0696
Content Quality: Good
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Excellent
Site of the Month: No
Author: Bonnie J. Burton
Starving artists would never have trouble finding a job if their resume and portfolio looked like M. Todd Garvin¹s Design Vision. Garvin is a Cincinnati area designer and artist who knows the power of the Internet and uses it to the fullest with his amazing eye candy portfolio. Look at his designs for packaging, logos, kiosks, multimedia presentations, and even a brand identity for a carbonated, vitamin-enriched fruit drink. Garvin isn¹t afraid of exploiting Shockwave either, though he does use a "Beavis and Butthead" sound byte on the first page. Yiesh.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 17

Enoch's Art & Design
URL: http://jumpnet.uoregon.edu/enoch/ENOCH'S_connection_point.html
Category: Art
Issue: 0696
Content Quality: Good
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Excellent
Site of the Month: No
Author: Bonnie J. Burton
Not all artists have to be worm food to have a gallery dedicated to their work. As a University of Oregon undergrad art/design student, Enoch has his "flat" art on display for the Web to ogle. Of his subjects, family and friend portraits seem to prevail, but Enoch creates some amazing nudes too. If curiosity gnaws at your bones, Enoch will give you the history behind each piece if you e-mail him.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 17

@tlas
URL: http://www.atlasmag.com
Category: Art
Issue: 0696
Content Quality: Excellent
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: Yes
Author: Wayne Cunningham
Just about every artist and writer dreams about having their own publication, a journal they have control of where they can publish work of fellow artists based on its merits rather than how well its been accepted by art critics and reviewers. Unfortunately, publishing requires a good deal of capital, which mostly goes for printing and distribution, and that means advertiser support, with all the inherent loss of content control that that implies. But the relatively inexpensive publishing medium of the Web has allowed Olivier Laude to achieve that dream of a true artists¹ publication. @tlas is dedicated to publishing various visual arts works in the categories of photography, illustration, design, and multimedia. According to Olivier, ³I have always dreamed of publishing a paper magazine that would be beautifully printed, cover stories (photo-journalistic and documentary) in depth and be designed by the best in the business.² And with a number of artists already on the fledgling site whose work has appeared in publications such as National Geographic and The New York Times Magazine, @tlas is shaping up will into Laude¹s vision. ³These kinds of ideas do not really emerge from publishing conglomerates because they are afraid of hybrids that do not fit niches within the market.² says Olivier in explanation of why he has chosen to become a publisher. The concept and content are great, but it wouldn¹t be a site of the month if it wasn¹t for the excellent graphic design of Amy Franceschini and Michael Macrone. Amy¹s work has also included a special site for the last San Francisco mayoral elections entitled Electomatic (http://www.electomatic.com), while Michael is a very experienced graphic designer in the print medium and has also authored six books. Olivier has worked as a professional photo-journalist for the last three years, and has some of his work in the photography section of @tlas. But while publishing a Web site is inexpensive, it is not free, and Olivier is already hitching up his capitalist train. @tlas recently gained Organic Online (http://www.organic.com) as an official sponsor to provide server space for the site. And, according to Olivier, ³We want to turn commercial and sell advertising.² Okay, Olivier, we all know that making money can be a nice thing, but keep your hands on those editorial controls.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 17

Selvia¹s Art Cave
URL: http://www.dnaco.net/~ivanjs/jshp.html
Category: Art
Issue: 0796
Content Quality: Excellent
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Bonnie J. Burton
Aside from touring the computer art gallery featuring portraits of skulls, fractals and nudes, visitors to Selvia¹s Art Cave can also watch a random alien fashion show or have a look at bad starship designs rejected by the Federation. Read true science stories about ham radio and integrated circuits. The art isn¹t worthy of any Dali award, but the hodgepodge of content and graphics make this Cave a site fit for any bat fixin¹ to byte into a digital gallery.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 17

Rembrandt
URL: http://amsterdam.park.org/Netherlands/pavilions/culture/rembrandt/
Category: Art
Issue: 0796
Content Quality: Good
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Excellent
Site of the Month: No
Author: Bonnie J. Burton
The long-deceased Dutch artist comes alive in this multimedia presentation of the Rembrandt Research Project. View Quicktime video explanations of ³The Jewish Bride² or listen to project director, Ernst van de Wetering discuss various Rembrandt works. Detailed papers on ³The Rough Manner: Rembrandt & Titian² and ³Paint Surface & the Evocation of Space.² Read how research found Rembrandt forgeries by dating not the paint but the wood panels behind the canvas.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 17

6168
URL: http://mindlink.net/ph/
Category: Art
Issue: 0796
Content Quality: Excellent
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Bonnie J. Burton
Canadian artists Peter Horvath and Sharon Matarazzo pool their talents and birth dates to form the site, 6168. From the very first page, you can tell designers were in charge of the site with its object-orientated, almost textless index. Take a journey into the mind of an immigrant and lost lover in two non-linear photo essays. 6168 incorporates both new media and old-fashioned snapshots to create an unique art form.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 17

Ken Christian¹s Photo Gallery
URL: http://www.ebicom.net/~kenchr/gallery/homepage.htm
Category: Art
Issue: 0796
Content Quality: Excellent
Aesthetic Quality: Good
TechnoSmart Quality: Excellent
Site of the Month: No
Author: Bonnie J. Burton
Give a guy a camera and twenty years later he¹s bound to have a few good pictures. Kenneth Christian served as a photographer, editor and publisher for The Banner-Independent, a small weekly in Booneville, Mississippi, from 1975 to 1995. The photo subjects range from cute little kids to not-so-sweet car wrecks. Photojournalists and art lovers alike will appreciate Ken Christian¹s concentration on detail as he focuses in on real life with only a camera in hand.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 17

Art Deco-Erté Museum
URL: http://www.webcom.com/~tuazon/ajarts/erte.html
Category: Art
Issue: 0396
Content Quality: Excellent
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Bonnie J. Burton
Creating his first successful costume design at the age of five, Erté began his career as one of the foremost fashion designers of the early twentieth century. The Art Deco Erté Museum displays some of Erté¹s most famous designs for the Folies-Bergère in Paris, including a costume for the Diamond in ³Les Pierres Précieuses² and a silver lamé costume, complete with pearl wings and ebony-plumed cap, that Erté himself wore to a ball. A Web site never looked so fashionable.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 17

Vintage Ink & Paint
URL: http://www.earthlink.net/~sworth/
Category: Art
Issue: 0396
Content Quality: Excellent
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Lydia Schwartz
There certainly is a vast amount of information here, though you'll have to take a nap on the scroll bar to get it. Yes, it's another page of infinite length. Despite this slight annoyance factor, the remaining layout is easy to read and the content is good. Visitors learn about collecting animation art, as well as how and where to purchase it. They also can search a glossary of animation-related terms and learn about restoration processes. Valuable for collectors.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 17

Babel
URL: http://WWW.BABELNY.COM/
Category: Art
Issue: 0596
Content Quality: Good
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Excellent
Site of the Month: No
Author: Bonnie J. Burton
Artists link the past to the future through oil paintings, sketches, sculptures, and now the Web. Babel encourages visitors to follow artists such as Melissa Marks into the Garden area, where her online exhibit, ³Volitia ‹The Abstract Vagina,² resides. And the Babylon Lottery section explores issues of the female body and features art by Karen Yasinsky and Laura Watts. This art site may wow you with its creative design ‹ forms, and nice graphics and layout, but it¹s still rather thin and slightly confusing.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 17

Survival Research Laboratories
URL: http://robotics.eecs.berkeley.edu/SRL/
Category: Art
Issue: 0496
Content Quality: Excellent
Aesthetic Quality: Good
TechnoSmart Quality: Excellent
Site of the Month: No
Author: Shel Kimen
A blazing background supports the content of Survival Research Lab¹s post-apocalyptic-demolition-style-techno-art extravaganza. A mouthful of rusty nails and battling robotic droids are sure to captivate the fascination of at least a few sadistic net surfers. And the pages devoted to Burning Man ‹ a giant wooden sculpture that is annually erected and torched in a Nevada desert ‹ are exceptionally inspiring. Survival Research Labs lives on the fringe of an over-exploited bleeding edge, and its web site will back this up. Outstanding.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 17

Cusimano: Surrealist Artist
URL: http://www.terraport.net/archiavv/
Category: Art
Issue: 0596
Content Quality: Excellent
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Bonnie J. Burton
Surrealist art isn¹t always a myriad of melting clocks. On the Cusimano: Surrealist Artist site, visitors wander through six galleries that feature paintings and drawings of desert roses, carousel horses, and levitating lips. The Canadian artist, Joseph Cusimano, explains every painting to help art lovers grasp the meaning behind an image as perplexing as his human tree. Cusimano, more than his art, resembles Dali (it¹s the mustache). Visit this site for a good dose of bizarre art and metaphysical madness.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 17

Novagraphics Space Art
URL: http://www.novaspace.com/
Category: Art
Issue: 0896
Content Quality: Excellent
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Diedra Ramsey
From the fantastic worlds of Star Trek and Star Wars to the real-life voyages of NASA's Apollo missions, Novagraphics Space Art sells photographic quality paintings by -- what else? -- space artists. Images include imaginary depictions of planets orbiting moons, exploding stars, spiraling black holes, and a collage of portraits of American astronauts. The Web site also sells art work signed by astronauts and pieces created by Apollo 12 astronaut, Alan Bean.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 17

ArtNow Gallery Guide
URL: http://www.gallery-guide.com/content/current/index.htm
Category: Art
Issue: 0896
Content Quality: Excellent
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Diedra Ramsey
Heading to New York City and wondering what's so special about the Brooklyn Museum? Or how about the Kunsthalle Wein Museum in Vienna, Austria? Well, the ArtNow Gallery has biographies, telephone numbers and addresses of museums from throughout the world. Taken as a whole, ArtNow is an attractive site with links to museums, artists, and exhibitions. Although it has international information, at present, the site has more information on American artists, museums and exhibitions than anywhere else.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 17

Chains
URL: http://found.cs.nyu.edu/andruid/CHAINS.html
Category: Art
Issue: 0896
Content Quality: Excellent
Aesthetic Quality: Good
TechnoSmart Quality: Excellent
Site of the Month: No
Author: Diedra Ramsey
Equal parts art, history, culture, and riddle, Chain invites visitors to unlock a coded message while introducing the West African nation of Ghana. Complete with audio files of vu gbe (drum language), artistic collages, and video footage from Ghana, the site is a hodgepodge of interwoven sites and philosophical musings in an ofttimes weird presentation of flashing words and warnings. If you have the time and patience, it is worth it, but don't visit if you seek straight-forward material on African cultures.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 17

@art gallery
URL: http://gertrude.art.uiuc.edu/@art/gallery.html
Category: Art
Issue: 0896
Content Quality: Excellent
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Heidi Swanson
With a layout as clean as the linoleum floor in a Mop n¹ Glo ad, the @art gallery is committed to exhibiting the best in contemporary electronic art. Artists are showcased on a revolving basis, with each exhibition lasting six to eight weeks. Operating from a collaborative foundation, @art is an optimal place for the exploration, generation, and presentation of digital art. A much needed celebration of technology and aesthetics, integrating the usually discrete disciplines of motion, video, text, images, rhythm, and sound. Lean, clean, and mean.....check it out.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 17

StarChild
URL: http://www.lcc.gatech.edu/starchild/
Category: Art
Issue: 0996
Content Quality: Good
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Excellent
Site of the Month: No
Author: Patrick Joseph
Decidedly New Age, the StarChild site is adorned with all the usual iconography, complete with ankh, unicorn and solar eclipse. StarChild is a ³multimedia opera² it seems, ³...a vision of eternal love.² Sort of like The Three Tenors in Xanadu, I guess. Not my kind of thing, but if you got a kick out of the harmonic convergence and like your opera with lots of high-tech sound and fury, then maybe this is the production for you. The site is an impressive piece of work, and will give you a taste of what your in for. Click on the ziggurat for ticket info.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 17

George Eastman House
URL: http://www.it.rit.edu:80/~gehouse
Category: Art
Issue: 0996
Content Quality: Excellent
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Karen Wickre
³You push the button, we do the rest² is a slogan George Eastman conjured up in 1888 to tout his new Eastman Kodak photo process. The saying applies equally well to the Web, including this page devoted to the Eastman House. Besides full info on the museum, gardens and grounds (operating hours, directions, fees), you¹ll get a taste of the current photo exhibits and film programs, discover the GEH library, and have a choice between several Eastman bios. You get selected links to film, photography and Rochester sites, too. If you care about the origins of photography, bookmark this one.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 17

Communication Arts
URL: http://www.commarts.com/
Category: Art
Issue: 0996
Content Quality: Excellent
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: Yes
Author: Lauren Guzak
Strictly speaking, Communication Arts, ³the essential creative resource,²is a professional print journal for graphic designers and others in the visual arts. The magazine is so rich and engaging, however, that even non-aesthetes are apt to snag a copy off the newsstand now and then. Now the impressive design magazine is online. Communication Arts¹ primary function is to showcase the best in design from around the world, examples of which you can find in the Exhibit Online. There¹s an open solicitation for work to display -- commercial artistic endeavors from packaging to direct mailers, shopping bags to CD covers. Following are background information, creative credits, and convenient thumbnail images of featured projects. Showcasing the best in design is not Communication Arts only function, however. This site is packed with resources for designers ³to enhance their work and careers and [serve as] a catalyst for bringing community to visual communicators around the world.² Resources include links to relevant hardware and software Web sites (including FTP sites where you can download software upgrades); a listing of the latest digital products and services; and a national database to find service bureaus that can output your work. The Business and Career section has a job board with listings for jobs offered and wanted, both of which had a fair amount of up-to-date activity. The Legal Affairs subsection, with posted articles from the Communication Arts¹ legal affairs columnist, Tad Crawford, addresses issues of copyright ownership, usage rights, and contracts--subjects which have been blurred as designers move into electronic media. Articles that were posted when I visited covered topics such as structuring your business, properly registering copyrights, and getting permission to use celebrity photographs. There¹s also a searchable database of design firms, advertising agencies, photographers, illustrators and multimedia developers whose work has appeared in Communication Arts over the last two years. And if you¹re looking to do research on a specific subject, you can turn to the database of books on design, advertising, and technology that have been reviewed in the magazine over the last five years. Communication Arts also sponsors a number of annual competitions, including the Interactive Design Competition , the winners of which are distributed on CD-ROM each year. Ultimately, professional designers and anyone else with an eye for smart graphics will find CA to be a treasure of information, tools and ideas.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 17

The Art of Tibetan Sand Painting
URL: http://www.chron.com/mandala/
Category: Art
Issue: 0996
Content Quality: Excellent
Aesthetic Quality: Good
TechnoSmart Quality: Excellent
Site of the Month: No
Author: Patrick Joseph
As much a humanities site as a showcase for this mysterious Tibetan art form, the whole experience here is an intriguing one. Bolstered by streamed audio of the monks¹ otherworldly chanting and links to background information on Buddhism and Tibetan politics, the sand paintings are given a depth that most art on the Web lacks. Sadly, the event on which the site is based has long past (February), the sand long since tossed into Houston¹s Buffalo Slough. Hopefully the page will stick around a while as a monument -- an appropriately ephemeral and transitory one -- to the effort. Despite the unfocused quality of many of the onscreen images, the beauty of the work still shines through.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 17

Internet ArtResources
URL: http://artresources.com/
Category: Art
Issue: 1296
Content Quality: Good
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Excellent
Site of the Month: No
Author: Sandra Stewart
Started in February 1995 as a guide to the visual arts worldwide, Internet ArtResources recently expanded to become a full-fledged visual arts journal, with reviews, articles, and commentaries. That portion remains a work in progress--there were only a few selections in each category when I checked in--but the guide, a searchable database of more than 5,900 listings and upwards of 1,000 images, remains a top-notch resource. Six separate areas cover museums, galleries, artists, art publications, art show and fairs, and art schools. If you're visiting London, for example, and you want a list of galleries and their current shows, you can quickly generate one here.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 17

SF MOMA
URL: http://www.sfmoma.org/
Category: Art
Issue: 0696
Content Quality: Good
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Bonnie J. Burton
Paintings of country dogs and suburban cars riddle The San Francisco Modern Art Museum Web site. Read about special exhibitions such as highlights from Mexican Modernism and Maya Deren film series, or look at slides of selections from the permanent collection (without holding them up to the light.) Study up on the history of the museum or plan your life around the calendar of exhibitions.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 16

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
URL: http://www.mfa.org/
Category: Art
Issue: 0696
Content Quality: Good
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Bonnie J. Burton
Discover the mythical art of the ancients and the captivating canvases of the post moderns at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Web site. The museum¹s first online exhibition explores the work of nineteenth-century New England painter, Winslow Homer, best known for his painting, "Long Branch, New Jersey." After artistic enlightenment, order a free museum catalog to be sent via snail mail. The site needs more interactivity before it can rank high with the other online masterpieces.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 16

The Unknown Photographer
URL: http://home.earthlink.net/~dpuglia/
Category: Art
Issue: 0796
Content Quality: Good
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Bonnie J. Burton
Java applets and still photography combine to make an obscure gallery unknown to the average Web wanderer. Some of the photographers in the exhibit do have names, unlike its title suggests. Miko Yamaguchi and David Puglia take viewers on a special trip through a strange world of broken hotel signs, cereal boxes in the snow and balloons on sticks that should make any shy shutterbug look for similar inspiration in the commonplace.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 16

Victoria Benatar Urban Home Page
URL: http://www.columbia.edu/~vb45/vb.index2.html
Category: Art
Issue: 0796
Content Quality: Good
Aesthetic Quality: Good
TechnoSmart Quality: Excellent
Site of the Month: No
Author: Bonnie J. Burton
If you could tear down New York City and start designing it over again on your computer, what would you do differently? The Victoria Benatar Urban Home Page showcases projects from students at the graduate school of architecture, planning and preservation at Columbia University. Students present their 3-D renderings of lower Manhattan and Harlem. Some of the text is a bit too academic to give a good understanding of the project, but the pictures might remind you of movie stills from *Blade Runner.*
Overall Rating (out of 18): 16

The Art Line
URL: http://grimmy.santarosa.edu/~sfaught/art.html
Category: Art
Issue: 0796
Content Quality: Good
Aesthetic Quality: Good
TechnoSmart Quality: Excellent
Site of the Month: No
Author: Bonnie J. Burton
From neoclassical to modern, The Art Line offers short descriptions of theme through art. Special articles take a closer look at the rapidly changing scenes and the freedom artists have to experiment. Any art lover or student will appreciate the vast spectrum of art jpegs as well as a huge directory of links to museums, university art departments and artists themselves.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 16

Blacksun
URL: http://www.dnai.com/~blacksun/
Category: Art
Issue: 0796
Content Quality: Good
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Bonnie J. Burton
This Java boy-wonder of a site displays art on canvas and on skin. Blacksun shows off paintings and tattoo designs, along with an article on taking care of the more ³permanent² works of body art. This site also revolves around a galaxy of Java animations: whirling squiggles, blooming flowers and dancing stick people add life to the monitor. Check out Blacksun¹s message board and guest book for more tattoo advice and Web design praises.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 16

Paris Pages: Paris Art
URL: http://www.paris.org/ParisArt/
Category: Art
Issue: 0596
Content Quality: Excellent
Aesthetic Quality: Good
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Bonnie J. Burton
When planning to create a site about Paris, one would inevitably expect to make art one of the main sections. After all, Paris isn¹t just about snooty waiters and croissants. In the Paris Art section of the Paris Pages, afficionados and collectors can search through lists of links for galleries, artists, or images. Some of the major contemporary artists residing on the site include Jean-Louis Guitard, Kara, Roger Karoubi, and Peter Klasen. An added plus: Paris Art provides prices and gallery locations for each piece featured. Viva la Web!
Overall Rating (out of 18): 16

DIA Center for the Arts
URL: http://www.diacenter.org/
Category: Art
Issue: 0596
Content Quality: Excellent
Aesthetic Quality: Good
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Bonnie J. Burton
If artists painted not from the soul but from the results of a market research survey, they would find a happy home at the DIA Center for the Arts in New York. DIA features experimental art, such as an online exhibit called, ³The Most Wanted Paintings on the Web.² These paintings reflect the artists¹ interpretations of a professional market research survey about style and taste; in turn, the site was created to please the greatest number of people. Visitors who fill out the online survey help determine future art and exhibits, making the site interactive and constantly evolving.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 16

Welcome to the Whitney Museum of American Art
URL: http://www.echonyc.com/~whitney/
Category: Art
Issue: 0596
Content Quality: Excellent
Aesthetic Quality: Good
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Bonnie J. Burton
The Whitney Museum of American Art understands America¹s quest for its own artistic identity and celebrates new, talented artists on its Web site. Whitney features beautiful paintings of railroad sunsets and morose roses. Learn why the Beat Generation influenced American art and culture in the 1960s. Walk on the wild side in the ³Altered and Irrational² section (zebra skin and Day-Glo?). Or witness oddities created from rubberized hair, mirror glass, and wood. The Whitney Museum represents some of the best, most obscure art in America with an equally exceptional Web site.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 16

The Castles of Wales
URL: http://www.wp.com/castlewales/home.html
Category: Art
Issue: 0596
Content Quality: Excellent
Aesthetic Quality: Good
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Bonnie J. Burton
If a man¹s home is his castle, then what is his home page? The Castles of Wales site presents visitors with more than just a few photos of royal casas. Learn the difference between the Norman and Edward castles. View short sketches on Wales' principal castle builders, and read an examination of what motivated their creations. Test your knowledge with the Welsh Castle Quiz, and discover why Chepstow Castle in southeast Wales is one of the best castles to visit. This site offers plenty of information on the history behind these majestic land marks. The Castles of Wales is a Web site fit for a king.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 16

Scultura
URL: http://www.scultura.com/
Category: Art
Issue: 0596
Content Quality: Good
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Bonnie J. Burton
Leave it up to a bunch of artists to try to form a renaissance on the Web. Scultura Arts Forum is creating a global network for artists to meet each other and transform the Web into a valuable tool for creativity. Read the classified ads or browse around in the many different galleries. Every medium, from wood sculptures to oil on a paper bag, is on the Scultura site. While some artists focus on brilliant, hand-painted silk paintings, others try to find physical expression of their souls through dance. This site attempts to represent all artists, whether they hold a paint brush or step into toe shoes.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 16

Mark Harden's texas.net
URL: http://www.texas.net/~mharden/index.html
Category: Art
Issue: 0596
Content Quality: Good
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Bonnie J. Burton
On Mark¹s texas.net Museum of Art home page, a visitor can travel to an FTP site to download pictures of great art or follow links to other museums. Look at the Impressionists from your computer monitor... does this mean you have to step back from your screen to fully appreciate the image? Or, Mark lets you read about the best art CD-ROM titles on the market. The initial cover page of the site is riddled with graphics, making navigation a bit turbulent, but at this site, even Mona Lisa would smile.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 16

Dys-Functional Pottery of John Britt
URL: http://www.erinet.com/claydude/britt1.html
Category: Art
Issue: 0896
Content Quality: Excellent
Aesthetic Quality: Good
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Diedra Ramsey
Just 'cause it looks like a cup, doesn't mean you should drink from it. Especially if it¹s a Dys-Functional mug by John Britt called "Honey, I believe you've cut your lip." Britt's site consists of artistic teapots, cups, jars, cans, bottles and chairs. His "dysfunctional" method of creation involves making the masterpieces, then breaking them apart, then putting them back into functional forms. Although Britt offers means to e-mail him, there is no indication that his works are for sale.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 16

Handshake Project
URL: http://www.mcs.net/~artic/home.html
Category: Art
Issue: 0896
Content Quality: Excellent
Aesthetic Quality: Good
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Diedra Ramsey
Packed with links that tend to make a visitor go "hmmm!" or "huh?," Handshake Project suffers from a lack of good copy editing. While there are some promising elements here -- even hints of a great site, (what with the continuous video of a handshake and analysis of personality profiles based on the shape and size of a hand) -- its disorganization and syntactical errors are too glaring to overlook. The site links to essays on the handshaking techniques of white-collar businessmen, a global look at the act of handshaking, the transmission of viruses, and a seemingly unrelated religion page. Speaking of copy editing, I don¹t think the Muslims consider Jesus a ³profit.² A *prophet* maybe, ...
Overall Rating (out of 18): 16

Art Crimes
URL: http://www.gatech.edu/desoto/graf/
Category: Art
Issue: 0896
Content Quality: Excellent
Aesthetic Quality: Good
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Diedra Ramsey
It's not about who is trying to steal the Mona Lisa from the Louvre. It's about the world of graffiti, baby. Featuring urban scrawl on trains, city walls, and digital graffiti from American cities, not to mention street art from around the world, this site provides up-to-date information on graffiti shows and interviews with graffiti artists.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 16

Playbill On-line
URL: http://wheat.symgrp.com/playbill/html/home.html
Category: Art
Issue: 0896
Content Quality: Excellent
Aesthetic Quality: Good
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Heidi Swanson
If following the theatre industry is your gig, Playbill is your site. They give us Broadway. They give us Off-Broadway. They even give us the *Road Rules* version of the *Nation Tour* circuit as it barrels across the heartland with semis full of glistening props and facial powder. Playbill is able to provide a laundry list of theatre offerings ranging from articles and interviews, to casting calls and job listings, plus pics, flix, and general info covering over 1,000 shows and theaters. Packed with content, arching through an electric redesign, and mentioning *Annie* no less than 10 times, it¹s a rare find indeed.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 16

The International Gallery of Art
URL: http://london-net.com/art/highhome.htm
Category: Art
Issue: 0996
Content Quality: Good
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Karen Wickre
Anticipating a downpour of business, the IGA has built a large umbrella site where you can bid on auction art, browse (and buy) in galleries, get creative tips or take a lesson in art appreciation. Only trouble is, there¹s not a lot of substance under the umbrella yet. The searcher for viewing art by styles or media yields few to no choices. The published Q&A section is skimpy, the links are mostly to Internet directories (not other galleries), and there¹s only one affiliate gallery link. IGA does thoughtfully present thumbnail images, so downloading what is there is at least tolerable.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 16

Bryant Foundation
URL: http://www.oir.ucf.edu/bryant/
Category: Art
Issue: 1096
Content Quality: Good
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Daniel Alarcon
Featuring a large collection of Caribbean art, this is the sort of site that makes you long for bigger screens. Though the works have been meticulously digitized, with amazing clarity and intense colors, some of the wonder is dulled if you have to scroll down and to the right to see it all. The archive is also a little uneven: some nations like Aruba, are represented by a single work, while others like Haiti, bask in the spotlight with dozens of fantastic paintings. The curators of the site have big plans however, including sorely missed artist bios, and virtual representations of sculptures and other three-dimensional art. Look for this site to become a winner. In the meantime, give thanks for real museums.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 16

ArtNow Gallery Guide
URL: http://www.gallery-guide.com
Category: Art
Issue: 1096
Content Quality: Excellent
Aesthetic Quality: Good
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Ananda Nada
Importing the simple design of its popular print series, ArtNow's site arranges current information on museums, galleries, artists and art fairs. Given the large number of European and stateside venues, the extent of the cross-linking is impressive, allowing you to exit to particular home-pages where available. With respect to "art fidelity," the few images included are frameless and well-compressed. The search engine that attempts to tie it all together sometimes leads to mis-anchored or unrelated links, but the site is easy enough to navigate without it.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 16

Images Photographic Gallery
URL: http://www.planetdata.com/images/
Category: Art
Issue: 1096
Content Quality: Good
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Heidi Swanson
Crooked teeth, plastic patio furniture, lace, and belly buttons; beautiful, disparate images are what distinguish this exceptional site. Ghostly landscapes and glowing appendages pepper this month¹s electronic exhibit in the Images Photographic Gallery, a beautiful site created to promote the arts on the Internet and provide a home for unrecognized artists to exhibit and sell their work. Photographs are presented against a pristine background, nicely complimenting the featured duotone and black and white prints. We also get the added bonus quirky insights into each artist¹s work. Take a peek!
Overall Rating (out of 18): 16

500X Gallery
URL: http://www.whytel.com/users/rawspace/500.html
Category: Art
Issue: 1196
Content Quality: Good
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Emily Soares
The 500X Gallery, operating since 1978 in the great state of Texas, encourages young and emerging artists to take creative risks in an uninhibited forum, free from the restrictions of mainstream galleries. The nicely designed site allows you to view the works of the 500X Gallery staff and members and provides links to related galleries. Especially good is the Pablum link which includes, in addition to record reviews and Japanese culture, a DIY HTML page called Webhead.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 16

Culture in Cyberspace
URL: http://www.radix.net/%7Ewlefurgy/welcome.htm
Category: Art
Issue: 1296
Content Quality: Good
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Ananda Nada
Every Monday, CinC features a fresh page of cross-linked reviews on arts and education-related Web sites, with special attention to the legal and industry trends that contribute to their design. Editorial is intelligent, insightful and wryly humorous, reflecting the curiosity of a weathered publishing professional who has fallen in love with the Internet. There is a weekly e-mail edition, and past issues are archived. Design is tastefully modest, but the links page (covering CNN down to the latest of nrrdy Web zines) should be recoded to launch a second browser window if the viewer links out of site.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 16

Rhizome
URL: http://rhizome.com/
Category: Art
Issue: 1296
Content Quality: Good
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Ananda Nada
A rhizome is a horizontal stem that extends underground and sends out shoots to the surface, connecting plants in a living network. Taking this metaphor for the Net as a point of departure, rhizome lets a community of hype-free designers and critics focus on sites of new media art emerging everywhere from the cyberpunk-next-door to the St. Petersburg Bienalle. Their reviews are knowledgeable, honest, and fiercely individual. A weekly mailing lets you join in the discourse. Designwise, Rhizome's baggy interface reflects its laid-back editorial and feels pretty smooth, but it's visually off balance and the colors need tweaking.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 16

ArtsWire
URL: http://www.artswire.org/ArtsWire/
Category: Art
Issue: 1296
Content Quality: Poor
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Excellent
Site of the Month: No
Author: Ananda Nada
ArtsWire connects an absurdly massive network of artists and arts-related organizations in the U.S. and calls it a community. Detailed information on suburban American museums, independent projects, and art world jobs abound. If you wish to address your site to such a community, you can submit your url and a description for immediate linkage. The regularly updated list of links is comprehensive and very useful to any one with interest in online art or networking. The Arts Wire Current mailing list features news updates on socioeconomic, philosophical, and political issues affecting the arts and culture. Contributions are invited.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 16

ArtNet Italia
URL: http://www.thru.com/art/
Category: Art
Issue: 1296
Content Quality: Good
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Sandra Stewart
This showcase for Italian photographers, painters, and sculptors links you to a group of mostly well-established, internationally exhibited artists. The quality of the work is high, and the perhaps unintentionally whimsical English translations make it seem all the more intriguing. Camillo Fait paints from "the satisfaction of translating a source of instinctive vitality into Š a love declaration for open air life," while Alice Gombacci's painting is "born out of the anguish of myth and of the stereotype of the legends." In the photography section, Fabrizio Bartolomucci's gorgeous images are eclectically paired with lists of "Popper flavoured maxims and explanations." Another plus: The electronic reproductions are excellent.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 16

Cleveland Museum of Art
URL: http://www.clemusart.com/
Category: Art
Issue: 1296
Content Quality: Excellent
Aesthetic Quality: Good
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Sandra Stewart
The Cleveland Museum of Art's snappily designed, colorful home page leads you to thorough, well-organized information and news about the museum, not to mention exhibits past and present. Regrettably, the current exhibit section contained everything except visuals when I looked at it. You can see images from past shows, however: The thoughtful online presentation of the Pharaohs exhibit from the Louvre includes front and back views of statues, as well as a time line and an account of how the Egyptian hieroglyphic system was deciphered. With images from current shows, this would be an exceptional museum site.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 16

Robert Williams
URL: http://www.razorfish.com/bluedot/williams/
Category: Art
Issue: 1296
Content Quality: Excellent
Aesthetic Quality: Good
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Sandra Stewart
"Robert Williams creates paintings that are, in the words of the artist, 'intriguingly disturbing¹.² So says the bio. I was eager to find them so, but the lurid, often grotesque, comic-inspired paintings here are too reminiscent of the drawings 15-year-old boys make on their school notebooks to be very challenging. Much is made of the potential offensiveness of naked pneumatic babes posed cooling on ice cream cones or pulling the eyeballs out of a skull-less brain, but the anticipation of viewer outrage is probably wishful thinking. The site itself, with elements such as the artist winking at you creepily beside his bio, is more clever and amusing than the work.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 16

FotoCircle
URL: http://www.wrldpwr.com/fotocircle
Category: Art
Issue: 1296
Content Quality: Excellent
Aesthetic Quality: Good
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Sandra Stewart
Simply and elegantly designed, with a gray-scale palette framing relatively high-resolution, mostly black-and-white photographs, FotoCircle is a treat to look at, particularly after a string of screaming-for-attention, graphically remedial sites. The project of a group of Seattle photographers associated with an alternative gallery by the same name, FotoCircle is also the kind of site Internet boosters love to see: a group of emerging artists using the technology to present their work on their own terms and on the same ground as institutionally supported artists. Current and past exhibits encompass a variety of work, from digitally altered photos to an essay on Morocco.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 16

Superunknown
URL: http://www.csusm.edu/public/guests/fm/
Category: Art
Issue: 1296
Content Quality: Excellent
Aesthetic Quality: Good
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Sandra Stewart
Subtitled "The Yellow Pages of the Underground Computer Art Scene," Superunknown is dedicated to the ANSI, ASCII, VGA, music, and demo "scenes." If you have no clue what those might be, visit the FAQ file, which provides definitions of terms and examples. But don't expect to come away from that little excursion fully enlightened--Superunknown is geared for those already in the know. Icons and lists in a multitude of frames take you to news and rumors, bulletin boards, art in various categories, and links you probably won't find on conventional art sites. Naturally, it's optimized for the latest technology, so those with less than state-of-the-art setups may be frustrated.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 16

Andrew Shachat
URL: http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/artbaby/
Category: Art
Issue: 0796
Content Quality: Good
Aesthetic Quality: Good
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Bonnie J. Burton
Not every artist can say he¹s illustrated for the New York Times, Village Voice, Seventeen and a children¹s book called ³Stop That Pickle.² Andrew Shachat¹s online portfolio captures dogs playing guitar, a devil munching on lollipops and cats selling cleaning fluid. Hang out with hipsters in his online art opening or try to decipher the humor behind his link to the Doctor Correlius Chimp¹s Hospital of Digital Genetics.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 15

AS220
URL: http://www.ids.net/~as220/home.html
Category: Art
Issue: 0396
Content Quality: Good
Aesthetic Quality: Good
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Shel Kimen
The creator of this bold, blinking space, AS220 is a non-profit Rhode Island organization for the arts. It¹s taken its off-line community by storm with a local cafe, a publicly accessible darkroom, youth arts conferences, and more. The cyber companion unfortunately doesn't beam with the same ambition. It's merely one step above an advertisement for the *real-life* services, along with local resources, links to artsy sites, and some tech talk. If you poke around long enough, though, you'll find some nice artwork.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 15

Los Angeles County Museum of Art
URL: http://www.lacma.org/
Category: Art
Issue: 0596
Content Quality: Good
Aesthetic Quality: Good
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Bonnie J. Burton
It¹s easy to discover the hidden secrets and lore behind the mystical artifacts of ancient Egypt when you take an online tour of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). Gaze into the eyes of a sculpture from the reign of Queen Hatshepsut. Behold the grandeur of an elaborate coffin lid from a twenty-sixth dynasty official. On the bizarre side: The LACMA site features artist Annette Messager, famous for her exhibit of dead birds wearing knitted sweaters. Prepare to learn and expand your mind at LACMA, whether you plan to see a dead human surrounded in artifacts or a dead bird surrounded in cable knit.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 15

fineArt forum online
URL: http://www.msstate.edu/Fineart_Online/home.html
Category: Art
Issue: 0596
Content Quality: Good
Aesthetic Quality: Good
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Bonnie J. Burton
The mission of fineArt forum online is to provide useful information on art and technology to anyone who wants it, free of charge. This arts and technology news site pushes the boundaries between art and the Internet within a zine featuring multimedia reviews, computer art, and a calendar of events. The Directory of Online Art Resources is a crucial part of the site for students, since it creates a space to study all facets of art. The Gallery is home to some of the best in painting, sculpture, and photographs online, with no admission fee. Some of the best fine art really can be seen for free.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 15

YellowDog
URL: http://www.discordia.org/~keeper/YellowDog.html
Category: Art
Issue: 0896
Content Quality: Good
Aesthetic Quality: Good
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Diedra Ramsey
The manager of this site seeks to add artistic flair to Macs and PCs with a customized or Elfquest comic desktop and icon designs. YellowDog also does fliers, brochures, menus, etc. for cash or barter. The site is also a meeting place for Elfquest fans.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 15

Art Indices International
URL: http://www.artindices.com/
Category: Art
Issue: 0896
Content Quality: Excellent
Aesthetic Quality: Poor
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Diedra Ramsey
Art Indices brings together an art gallery and an interior designer with the goal of delivering art to the office or home. The home page links to the gallery's and designer's pages. While the site is filled with information and services, the presentation is pedestrian and gray.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 15

Artists Online
URL: http://www.onlineart.com/
Category: Art
Issue: 0896
Content Quality: Good
Aesthetic Quality: Poor
TechnoSmart Quality: Excellent
Site of the Month: No
Author: Heidi Swanson
While Artists OnLine offers works from an established pool of 100 artists, I would have to equate my experience here with buying fine art at a strip mall. No flash, no sass, no flavor. I cringed as I came face-to-face with the default hyperlink blue surrounding a lush acrylic painting. One redeeming factor here is the super snazzy search engine, which allows you to look for art by mood: macabre, say, or chaotic. Slick. The site has potential, but it needs a bigger pool of artists, navigational redesign, and a more complimentary way to display mode.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 15

Jackovac's Peoples Gallery
URL: http://www.netm.com/art/
Category: Art
Issue: 0996
Content Quality: Good
Aesthetic Quality: Good
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Karen Wickre
We don¹t know who Jackovac is, but we do know the Jackovac People¹s Gallery encourages any artist to display photos, prints and paintings here. There¹s a small selection of works within a nicely-designed site, but not enough information. You choose the artist whose four or five selections are listed by name only, so it¹s strictly luck of the draw as to what you¹ll see. There are no artist bios, or info on finding their works off the Web. Even so, Jackovac¹s space is pleasant enough if you just want a text-free visual art break.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 15

Flicker Light
URL: http://members.gnn.com/Repasky/Repasky.htm/repasky.htm
Category: Art
Issue: 1096
Content Quality: Good
Aesthetic Quality: Good
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Daniel Alarcon
Flicker Light showcases digital art, fiction, poetry, and commentary, all courtesy of the unusual mind contained in the body of Tom Repasky. Just so you know who you're dealing with: Repasky believes his old self was taken over by an interstellar essence or alien of some sort after a near-death experience at age fourteen. He has been pretending to be a human named Tom ever since. His fascination with galaxies and space, etc. can be seen in the flashy neon, Day-Glo space-scapes that inhabit his Web site. The page is very busy, the images get a little abstract, the essays are sometimes cryptic, but his account of his brush with death is a must- read. How do you like our planet, Tom?
Overall Rating (out of 18): 15

Sacred Cow
URL: http://www.raygun.com/sacredcow/
Category: Art
Issue: 1096
Content Quality: Good
Aesthetic Quality: Good
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Daniel Alarcon
At this site you'll find photo essays with uplifting titles like, "Hollywood Rogues", "Dark Carnival", or (my favorite) "In the Asylum". It's laid out very nicely, with all the good cheer befitting a funeral procession on an overcast Tuesday. The shots, though stark, are dazzling at times, and left me wishing I could get a closer look. I couldn¹t. The narration lays the gloom and doom on a little thick, but at least their outlook is consistent. There's info on industrial music and a set of O.J. verdict-inspired dirges about the end of the world that left me scratching my head. All in all, you should avoid this site if you're maladjusted, hyper-sensitive, depressed, or asthmatic. Consult your doctor or therapist.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 15

Wildcat Kids Photos
URL: http://www.siprep.com/howdy.html
Category: Art
Issue: 1096
Content Quality: Good
Aesthetic Quality: Good
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Ananda Nada
These are the pages of St. Ignatius, a Jesuit prep school that's nearly as old as its hometown of San Francisco. The focus here is on photography. Even as our government seeks to regulate online self-expression, "photography encourager" Paul Hanley leads his students into the expressive freedom of hyperspace. Photos are exhibited among seven galleries along with students' musings on their inspiration. Send email if you like what you see. Tables and a fresh palette of backgrounds keep the browsing smooth. An illustrated history of St. Ignatius provides some context, but requires more information to be interesting, or useful.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 15

Internet for the Fine Arts
URL: http://www.fine-art.com/
Category: Art
Issue: 1096
Content Quality: Good
Aesthetic Quality: Poor
TechnoSmart Quality: Excellent
Site of the Month: No
Author: Ananda Nada
IFA charges galleries and independent artists to catalog and otherwise promote their works by featuring them in their busy web. Here, you can price an Alvar or a Warhol, and then fill out a form to initiate its purchase. There's no shortage of self-promoting unknowns in case you feel like speculating. It's hard to see how they expect to sell work, though, if it isn't visible. Add some jpegs, I say. There's plenty to see outside of the catalogs, a lot of it site-specific, and the list of links is rewarding.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 15

The Art Machine
URL: http://www.theartmachine.com/
Category: Art
Issue: 1096
Content Quality: Excellent
Aesthetic Quality: Poor
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Heidi Swanson
So, you really want your website to look like a bad 60's revival? Then point that tie-dyed browser in the direction of The Art Machine, an archive of textures and images free for use with websites and other computer-generated art. In an effort to uphold their reputation as recipients of the coveted *Funky Mama* award, our friends at Art Machine work diligently to crank out 64 new textures each week. All of which are 100% guaranteed to aesthetically corrupt your site. This site is worth a peek if only to experience the one-and-only mating sea-urchin animation.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 15

Theatre Direct, International
URL: http://theatredirect.com/
Category: Art
Issue: 1196
Content Quality: Good
Aesthetic Quality: Good
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Gary Barker
Theatre Direct, International seeks to become for live theatre what 777-FILM has become for movie theaters. Background information, showtimes, ticket sales and gossip are provided for live shows in New York, touring US stage companies, and London. The gossip seems like satire. To wit, did you know ex-Monkee Mickey Dolenz is writing a musical version of the 70s sitcom Happy Days? It premieres in London's West End before 1997. And, on Broadway next season, audiences will delight to a toe-tapping musical about the sinking of the Titanic. Somewhere out there, someone is trembling with anticipation.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 15

Havana Street
URL: http://www.eden.com/~havana/index.html
Category: Art
Issue: 1196
Content Quality: Good
Aesthetic Quality: Good
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Emily Soares
Havana Clipart is a company which specializes in 40¹s era graphics. There are some freebies available on this site but if you want the goods, get ready to spend between $59 to $79 bucks for a CD-ROM. As a site, it doesn¹t offer much except for page after page of faces, people, and vehicles done with a wartime twist, which are fun to look at. Links to a zine called Retro and The Clipart Connection site.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 15

In Our Path
URL: http://www.tmn.com/iop/
Category: Art
Issue: 1196
Content Quality: Good
Aesthetic Quality: Good
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Emily Soares
This combination of photos, essays, and interactive maps follows the construction and aftermath of the Century Freeway Corridor in Los Angeles. Beginning the project in 1982, photographer Jeff Gates soon found the ramifications of his curiosity broadening as the project took shape. The end product of his work was several exhibits/community symposiums which are combined on the site. Seeking simply to capture the sense of "abandoned suburbia" that the scenery exuded, Gates became caught up in the stories of the people being displaced by the freeway as well as those involved in building it.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 15

IPPA
URL: http://www.capstudio.com/ippa/award.html
Category: Art
Issue: 1296
Content Quality: Good
Aesthetic Quality: Good
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Ananda Nada
The Internet Professional Publishers' Association DX award recognizes Web sites for design excellence. Its criteria are decidedly more serious than those of your run-of-the-mill "cool site awards". The IPPA focuses on the finest examples of design for "commercial applications" through the Internet, so you've got to be a Web-savvy merchant in order to win their admiration. Each week you'll find a big money site like Virgin Records or Salon critiqued by a conservative writer who hates plug-ins. If you're interested in keeping abreast of corporate repurposing and web design, this is a good site to bookmark.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 15

Virtual Gallery
URL: http://www.foggy.com/show/
Category: Art
Issue: 1296
Content Quality: Good
Aesthetic Quality: Good
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Sandra Stewart
The organizers of this online art exhibition accepted any and all submissions meeting size and delivery requirements, a policy that had a predictable effect on the show's coherence but not the wild variation in quality one might expect. I didn't see any embarrassingly amateurish doodlings among this selection of painting, sculpture, pottery, and digital art from around the world, but neither did I find anything particularly challenging or unusual. Perhaps because of the venue, the digital art section contains the largest number of pieces. They're also some of the most interesting, if only because they show how far the medium has come in terms of sophistication.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 15

Art Wave
URL: http://www.art-wave.com
Category: Art
Issue: 1296
Content Quality: Good
Aesthetic Quality: Good
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Sandra Stewart
An Internet art gallery modeled on a mainstream traditional gallery, Art Wave shows original work by featured artists as well as juried shows open to all artists meeting its guidelines. The site is geared toward buyers, gallery owners, decorators, and agents as well as artists, and it's appropriately polished and professional (don't expect a sharp edge). Art Wave artist portfolios are indexed by name, style, medium, and subject matter; just click on an artist's name to get a panel of thumbnail images, then click again to see any of them in a larger size. An inexpensive, convenient way to connect artists with a far-flung public, this site could spawn legions of imitators.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 15

Barbara Safran Studios
URL: http://www.csi.nb.ca/safran/
Category: Art
Issue: 0796
Content Quality: Poor
Aesthetic Quality: Good
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Bonnie J. Burton
Horses, flowers and clouds are the muses behind Barbara Safran¹s paintings. The site has a handful of artwork and one interview with the painter. Beginning painters will find the Artist Corner to be the most interesting and helpful section, with advice on the horizon line, perspective, still life, painting on location, and working from photographs. The Studio should put more work online, though, to really be worth its bandwidth.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 14

The Drawings of Leonardo da Vinci
URL: http://banzai.msi.umn.edu/~reudi/leonardo.html
Category: Art
Issue: 0996
Content Quality: Good
Aesthetic Quality: Good
TechnoSmart Quality: Poor
Site of the Month: No
Author: Patrick Joseph
An elegantly simple page with just 15 drawings by the Master, you won¹t find the Mona Lisa or The Last Supper here, but there¹s a list of other da Vinci sources which you can link to later. Many of the images on this page, at under 20K, are quick to download and the quality is uniformly excellent. As yet, there doesn¹t appear to be one all-inclusive site on the Web devoted to da Vinci¹s work, but this one, compiled by a researcher at the University of Minnesota, is at least a good start.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 14

Velocity
URL: http://www.irational.org/velocity/
Category: Art
Issue: 0996
Content Quality: Poor
Aesthetic Quality: Good
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Patrick Joseph
The roadway and graffiti are leitmotifs in this black-and-white, graphical, slideshow sort o¹ thing. Maybe the images are random. Maybe not. Maybe it loops, maybe not (if it does, I didn¹t wait long enough). Beyond that, I don¹t think there¹s much here. Or,...if there is, I didn¹t...don¹t get it. I think one graffito read, ³krime,² but I can¹t be sure because I was looking up ³leitmotif² at the time. Of course, I could go back and check it out, but I¹ve wasted too much time on it already.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 14

The Flying Pig Awards
URL: http://www.ccnet.com/~cccorlew/pigs/pigs.html
Category: Art
Issue: 1096
Content Quality: Excellent
Aesthetic Quality: Poor
TechnoSmart Quality: Poor
Site of the Month: No
Author: Ananda Nada
The Flying Pig is sponsored by the laid-back, beer-drinking photo staff at the *Antioch California Ledger Dispatch.* Attuned to small-town assignments and hackneyed editorial, their criteria favours photojournalists shooting in the "real world" as opposed to, say, the theatre of war. The result is a list of winners arranged in categories such as "Person in an Office" and "Bowling." Mail-tos invite photographers to use the page as a gateway to their peers. The jury's concession to spectacle comes in the form of a special award for Tomas Ovalle's photos from the Burning Man festival, which alone are worth a visit.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 14

The Paintings of Vermeer
URL: http://www.ccsf.caltech.edu/~roy/vermeer/
Category: Art
Issue: 1196
Content Quality: Good
Aesthetic Quality: Poor
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Gary Barker
The Paintings of Vermeer is a tribute to 17th century painter, Jan Vermeer. Only 35 of his paintings have survived and all of them are available here in digitized form. Vermeer's art was ignored for more than 200 years after his death, but in the nineteenth century his photorealistic work became widely recognized. Scholars suspect Vermeer's realism was the result of his using a camera obsura, one of the forerunners of the photographic camera. Intended for art scholars, the site makes the subject accessible for the layman as well.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 14

The Word Online
URL: http://rampages.onramp.net/~voorhees/index.htm
Category: Art
Issue: 1296
Content Quality: Good
Aesthetic Quality: Poor
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Sandra Stewart
The Word Online's articles, interviews, columns, and commentaries don't always live up to their provocative titles-"Disney's Pocohontas and Child Pornography" turns out to be a mild expose-but often enough they deliver piquant, substantive discussions of art-related subjects. Although it's described as simply an arts and literature resource, The Word Online has enough coherence and original material to qualify as an electronic journal. In addition to prose on various subjects, you'll find Web poetry, short reviews, annotated links to other art sites and resources. Heavy on text and light on images, The Word is easy jump around in, if visually bland.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 14

RusArt
URL: http://www.rawspace.net/RusArt/rusart.htm
Category: Art
Issue: 1296
Content Quality: Good
Aesthetic Quality: Poor
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Sandra Stewart
Even considering that Web site awards are handed out like candy on Halloween, this site is a mystery. A list of awards is the only thing on it except for a guest book, links to general art sites, and one Russian gallery featuring six artists. Each artist has home page containing a profile, a few images, and in some cases critical commentary. When I clicked on an artist whose work was labeled "alternative," I was able to retrieve blurry images framed in gray. Other artists' portfolios loaded fully, but none really stood out, and the selection is so limited that RusArts hardly seems worth the trouble.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 14

JZ Presents Art of Joan
URL: http://www.inch.com/~jeffz/joan_art.html
Category: Art
Issue: 0596
Content Quality: Poor
Aesthetic Quality: Good
TechnoSmart Quality: Poor
Site of the Month: No
Author: Bonnie J. Burton
Joan Stennick, like Alice in Wonderland, must have met many smiling cats in her dreams. The JZ Presents Art of Joan site wants to make sure the net isn¹t void of grinning kitties. But the site doesn¹t offer a particularly extensive showing of Joan¹s art, and since it¹s located on Joan¹s boyfriend¹s home page, it comes across more like a poorly thought-out promotion. Perhaps if JZ let Joan do her own explaining and offered a bit more than three large paintings, we might care more about images of smirking felines.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 13

Jim Pollack Vietnam Art
URL: http://members.aol.com/jimm844224/vietart1.html
Category: Art
Issue: 0896
Content Quality: Good
Aesthetic Quality: Poor
TechnoSmart Quality: Poor
Site of the Month: No
Author: Diedra Ramsey
There's art in war, but don't expect to find the stunning flora and fauna of Vietnamese jungles here. Jim Pollack's art -- pen-and-ink and dullish watercolors -- are of soldiers on the front line. Pollack's works are among several Vietnam veteran paintings that are part of the U.S. Army Military History War Collection in Washington, D.C. The site contains links to army documents on the arts, news articles, war art and some of Pollack's non-war art. Like war itself, however, the artwork and site are bleak.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 13

Beauty?
URL: http://www.chiatday.com/cd.www/invent/art/beauty2.html
Category: Art
Issue: 0896
Content Quality: Poor
Aesthetic Quality: Good
TechnoSmart Quality: Poor
Site of the Month: No
Author: Diedra Ramsey
Beauty? How about, ³Boring?² This site delves into the mind of photographer Jill Greenberg and her poetic notion of beauty. It contains a poem with a few words that link to distorted photographs of a woman. After a while, the photos all look the same, and the files are huge; those with slow connections, be warned: it¹ll take patience to appreciate the work.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 13

The Metropolitan Museum of Art
URL: http://www.metmuseum.org/
Category: Art
Issue: 0996
Content Quality: Poor
Aesthetic Quality: Poor
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Patrick Joseph
There¹s nothing very artistic about the Met¹s home page. In fact, the presentation is so uninspired that I began to wonder if the museum has any business in the art world. Of course, who am I to say? All I know is that this site is a big, giant disappointment with nothing to offer except a bare-bones schedule, a half-assed virtual tour with some lackluster gifs, and a tedious statement by the museum director, under the flashy title, ³The Met and the New Millenium.² ³The collections are the raison d`etre of the Museum,² he writes. I expected the same to be true of the Web site.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 13

FAVELA
URL: http://www.favela.org/intro/main.html
Category: Art
Issue: 0396
Content Quality: Not Rated
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Excellent
Site of the Month: No
Author: Shel Kimen
I'm in love with this site. It is living art. It is pages and pages of ethereal transcription. It is a journey through minds of all origins and politics that are often silenced. It is a voice for inspired artists, writers, film makers, and self-proclaimed visionaries. (One look at the guest book will verify there are many Internet travelers who share this opinion.) At the same time, its direct, political, confrontational nature ignites realistic horror. The content moves us through an all-too-close look at the declining state of human affairs ‹ racism, ethnocentrism, sexism, and hate. Its haunting perspective is nonetheless appreciated, as too few are willing to walk this line of open expression about our present social condition. Favela is a collective/collaborative organization of seven members who do not use the standard "staff model" of hierarchical positions ‹ editor, art director, assistant, etc. The site went live on the midnight between Halloween and Dia De Los Muertes (Day of the Dead), and throughout, it symbolically emphasizes its relationship to this haunting moment of the year. There's more symbolism in the subject/index headings, titled Visible Frenzy, Rabid Sphinx, Meat Locker, Detonation Slate, and Shooting Range. Within these headings, you'll find original artwork, political and social essays, creative writing, and a "coming soon" ubiquitous link page. Favela's members describe their approach as "cross-cultural, cross-generational, and cross-gender. We are invested in using technology and communication for cultural production on the Internet. We act as architects of a context for free play between individuals invested in aesthetics, ideas, and social content.² On the technical side, the creators are masters of HTML using BBEdit. They script their own C and Perl code, use Macs for content creation, and employ a Sun Internet Server to power the site. This write-up is heavy in tone because the site is heavy in essence and only recommended for those who have heart to think freely and explore the ideas of others. I almost feel that to use the usual "outstanding graphics" and "high-density content" ratings for Favela would do little to describe the inspiration I felt when browsing, no, pouring over this site. It is beyond a doubt the most moving, aesthetically pleasing, and thought-provoking Web creation I have seen thus far. I hope that this review encourages you to visit the site. I guarantee it will be worth your time.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 12

CENTRIPEDUS CENTER SEEKING ART
URL: http://www.centripedus.com/
Category: Art
Issue: 0396
Content Quality: Not Rated
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Excellent
Site of the Month: No
Author: Bonnie J. Burton
Artists aren¹t highly known for their ability to act coherently, and the Centripedus Center Seeking Art Web site won¹t shatter this notion. On the surface, the site appears to be an avant-garde commercial page, but the more you sink into the center, the more you¹ll realize you¹re inside a chaotic mess of political and philosophical diatribes about Christianity and capitalism. The site proudly promotes online art revolutions and various Web projects, including the promotional art for the movie *The Net *.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 12

VIRTUAL GALLERY
URL: http://oroppas.sec.or.jp/Gallery/GALLERY2.html
Category: Art
Issue: 0396
Content Quality: Not Rated
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Excellent
Site of the Month: No
Author: Shel Kimen
This is a great site for casual Image browsing. If you want to see pictures of artwork from Japan, there are hundreds to choose from here. The pictures span most mediums ‹ painting, printing, sculpture, architecture, and design. Equally impressive is the kids¹ gallery, organized by subject categories: monsters, animals, parents, etc. There¹s also an open call for kids to submit artwork, so get your budding Van Goghs started now. The site is translated in both English and Japanese, for an oh-so-international effect. It's extremely well done.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 12

Zupergraphyx
URL: http://www.ping.be/Zupergraphyx!/
Category: Art
Issue: 0396
Content Quality: Not Rated
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Excellent
Site of the Month: No
Author: Bonnie J. Burton
Pigs produce bacon, pork, and really cool Web sites. On Zupergraphyx, each part of a patchwork pig will take you on an interesting journey inside the mind of a Web designer. The quality of the graphics alone will make any pig¹s tail curl. Rub the pig¹s lower back and it¹ll take you through the step-by-step process of making a Web page for a finicky client. Poke the pig¹s rear and you¹ll get information on a text editor called Futplex. Lots of useful information just from dissecting a cyber piggy.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 12

Idea Exchange
URL: http://warren-idea-exchange.com/
Category: Art
Issue: 0496
Content Quality: Not Rated
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Excellent
Site of the Month: No
Author: Bonnie J. Burton
The Idea Exchange makes corporate art look cool. The site, sponsored by the Warren paper company, goes the extra mile by providing links to illustrators, finishers, photographers, pre-press houses, printers, professional associations, and more. In the Printer¹s Forum, desktop publishers can access information on flexography, thermal transfer, paper stock, sheet-fed offset, and other high-tech publishing issues. Fanzine editors and glossy magazine publishers alike will agree this is one of the brightest ideas on the Web.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 12

Asian Arts
URL: http://www.webart.com/asianart/index.html
Category: Art
Issue: 0496
Content Quality: Not Rated
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Excellent
Site of the Month: No
Author: Bonnie J. Burton
Before Monet and Picasso picked up paint brushes, art existed as a sacred form of expression. In the Asian Arts site, visitors learn how sculpture played a central religious role in Indian civilization. Much of the Asian art pays tribute to ancient deities such as the Vajrayana statue, which represents the five cosmic elements dominating the world: form, sensation, name, adaptation and consciousness. After gazing at the imagery, peruse extensive articles on the Giant Thangkas of Tsurphu Monastery, the Tsa-Tsa Votive Tablets of Tibet, a Taglung Lama, and more.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 12

Lambright Collection
URL: http://www.lambright com
Category: Art
Issue: 1196
Content Quality: Poor
Aesthetic Quality: Poor
TechnoSmart Quality: Poor
Site of the Month: No
Author: Gary Barker
The Lambright Collection is just plain spooky. A guy named Wayne Lambright III is madly in love with himself. He paints, which is a fine hobby, but apparently thinks he is one of the greatest artists ever to daub a palette. He lists himself in the company of Gauguin, Da Vinci, Renoir, Michelangelo, Cezanne, Monet and Picasso. As if to justify the hefty price tags on his work, he asks rhetorically "If Van Gogh were alive today, how much would you pay for one of his paintings?" Plenty, Wayne, but, well, ... you¹re no Van Gogh.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 12

911 Gallery Home Page
URL: http://www.iquest.net/911/iq_911.html
Category: Art
Issue: 0396
Content Quality: Not Rated
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Excellent
Site of the Month: No
Author: Bonnie J. Burton
In case of an artistic emergency, go directly to the 911 Gallery Home Page. The 911 Gallery specializes in digital art: computer graphics, video, and electronic music. Delight your eyeballs staring into portraits of cyber condors and fractal fish. Play with the interactive paintings hanging on the walls of 3-D rooms. Witness an artist¹s search for her identity within scratchy portraits of home life in Palestine. Dialing the 911 Gallery will save you from the horrors of visual boredom.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 11

Barcelona Pavilion
URL: http://www.auckland.ac.nz/arch/mats/barcelona/01_2.html
Category: Art
Issue: 0396
Content Quality: Not Rated
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Excellent
Site of the Month: No
Author: Shel Kimen
Six months ago, this was little more than a series of photographs of the Barcelona Pavilion ‹ an exhibition designed by Mies Van Der Rohe for the 1929 World¹s Exhibition ‹ linked together to create the illusion of a 3D space. It was a creative way to explore a modern architectural masterpiece. But since then, the creators have added QuickTime VR (download the demo; it's a heavy 2.8MB but worth it), a smoother layout, and a place for tourists to post and read comments. You won't find much actual information about the exhibition or Mies. It's purely aesthetics ‹ and well done.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 11

The Chagall Windows
URL: http://www1.huji.ac.il/md/chagall/chagall.html
Category: Art
Issue: 0396
Content Quality: Not Rated
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Excellent
Site of the Month: No
Author: Bonnie J. Burton
Even with all the hype that accompanied Windows 95, some windows still exist that represent an entity more powerful even than Bill Gates. The Chagall Windows site celebrates Mark Chagall¹s stained glass portraits of the 12 sons of the Biblical patriarch Jacob. The site has biographical information on Chagall, who created the windows to honor his Jewish parents, and pictures of the actual windows illustrated with animals, fish, flowers, and Jewish symbols. This site underscores how the Web can be used as an artistic tribute.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 11

Neil Harrison Website
URL: http://www.nol.net/~nil/dali.html
Category: Art
Issue: 0396
Content Quality: Not Rated
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Excellent
Site of the Month: No
Author: Bonnie J. Burton
Neil Harrison Website is home to the Dali Virtual Museum of Art and satisfies the surrealist cravings of art-starved net surfers. Using an interactive map, visitors can wander through various rooms, including the Great Hall, which displays the famous paintings ³Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory² and ³The Christ of St. John of the Cross.² Biographical information on this obscure artist seems to be unimportant to the virtual museum curators, but the plethora of Dali photographs and paintings will satiate any hungry minds running through these halls of art.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 10

WEBSTOCK
URL: http://ching.com/
Category: Art
Issue: 0396
Content Quality: Not Rated
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Bonnie J. Burton
First there was Woodstock, then Wigstock, now Webstock. As a virtual art colony in Cyberia, Webstock promotes alternative art, music, and philosophy. Discover ³the sound sculptures² or lap drums of composer Ken Lovelett . Ponder the significance of artist Justin Love¹s portraits of two black cats eating watermelon. Or read about brain simulators, astrology, Lake Klamath Blue Green Algae, and WomanStock. Webstock would make any Zippy proud to hold up the peace sign in cyberspace.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 10

Graphite and Phosphor
URL: http://www2.msstate.edu/~mbs1/gallery/gp.html
Category: Art
Issue: 0496
Content Quality: Not Rated
Aesthetic Quality: Excellent
TechnoSmart Quality: Poor
Site of the Month: No
Author: Karina Vasser
Graphite and Phosphor carries itself with an aura of mystery and discovery. Packaged with beautiful images and thoughtful layouts, this site pays homage to its creator¹s architectural and design passion, wonderfully displaying past and current projects. While some pages require a bit of patience (the site is almost exclusively composed of heavy images), the material at the end of the modem pull is well worth the wait.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 10

Kiernan's Wavefront Homepage
URL: http://www.unm.edu/~kholland/
Category: Art
Issue: 0496
Content Quality: Not Rated
Aesthetic Quality: Not Rated
TechnoSmart Quality: Excellent
Site of the Month: No
Author: Bonnie J. Burton
While some net kids dabble in animation, others become MPEG movie geniuses. Wavefront separates the greatness from the gunk with a collection of Kiernan Holland¹s own MPEG creations. Download and watch short animations of cyber insects, hand shadows, rolling walrus heads, and blazing infernos. And, after viewing these curiosities, check out the Resumes Of Wavefront Experts At UNM section; prospective employers are encouraged to give jobs to Kiernan¹s classmates. The next George Lucas or David Lynch could be an MPEG hack in disguise.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 8

ArtServe, Art & Architecture
URL: http://rubens.anu.edu.au/
Category: Art
Issue: 0396
Content Quality: Not Rated
Aesthetic Quality: Not Rated
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Shel Kimen
This is rated as one of Point Survey's Top 5% of all Web sites, and although that little purple star logo has made itself a joke among Internet users (it's about as rare as the tenth America Online disk you've gotten for free this month), this site might actually deserve the award ‹ at least in terms of content. It's a huge, searchable (by period, subject, or title of work) database of art and architecture that¹s 16,000 images thick. The organization is a little difficult to follow at times, but considering the amazing amount of resources archived, it's pretty good.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 7

Kaleidoscope Resource
URL: http://www.eiu.edu/ac/busi/lum/kr.html
Category: Art
Issue: 0396
Content Quality: Not Rated
Aesthetic Quality: Not Rated
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Bonnie J. Burton
All those who remember spending their childhood hours gazing into a small rod with mirrors and colored glass will appreciate the Kaleidoscope Resource. This online guide has information on kaleidoscope history, artists, material sources for making a kaleidoscope, societies, Clifford Pickover's Kaleidoscope image of the month, and more. Transform your computer screen into an ever-changing myriad of colors with kaleidoscope screen savers. You don¹t have to be a child to experience the random artistic beauty of the Kaleidoscope Resource Page.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 7

Victoria Benatar Urban HOME PAGE
URL: http://www.columbia.edu/~vb45/
Category: Art
Issue: 0396
Content Quality: Not Rated
Aesthetic Quality: Not Rated
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Shel Kimen
Victoria is an architecture graduate student at Columbia University who¹s displaying some of her works on her home page. Though the site is not exactly stunningly spectacular, it contains an interesting project about urban housing in Harlem that's inspiring (if you¹re someone who¹s interested in urban architecture). She's also built up an area for the Columbia University Urban Housing Department, and includes work from other students who don't have their own pages. Worth a visit for archi-types.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 7

Dayglo's Animation
URL: http://www.isisnet.com/dayglo/
Category: Art
Issue: 0496
Content Quality: Not Rated
Aesthetic Quality: Not Rated
TechnoSmart Quality: Excellent
Site of the Month: No
Author: Bonnie J. Burton
Flying sharks and neon pirates steer this Dayglo ship. You at home can download MPEG movie treasures of Mayan temples, robotic ferns, swimming schools of brickfish, and the superhero antics of Fifty P Man. Dayglo also offers a booty of free animation software and demos, and more links to amusing and weird sites that you can shake an MPEG leg at. The site should help beginning animators get a jump on their own creations instead of walking the plank alone. This, matey, is one ship everyone should sail.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 7

dalilink.html
URL: http://www.mercon.com/mercon/carl/dali-sur.html
Category: Art
Issue: 0396
Content Quality: Not Rated
Aesthetic Quality: Not Rated
TechnoSmart Quality: Poor
Site of the Month: No
Author: Bonnie J. Burton
Melting clocks and broken telephones saturate Salvador Dali¹s surrealist art for more than mere shock value. Dalilink, the home page for this unusual artist, traces how events in Dali¹s life ‹ among them a meeting with Sigmund Freud, a narrow escape from the Nazi invasion of France, and his falling in love with soul mate Gala Dali ‹ got translated in his art. The site has plenty of links to other Dali-obsessed pages and museum exhibits. Dalilink offers an Internet refuge for this madman who was not mad.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 6

Karl Kotas Home Page
URL: http://www.users.interport.net/~karlvent/
Category: Art
Issue: 0396
Content Quality: Not Rated
Aesthetic Quality: Not Rated
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Bonnie J. Burton
A man of many masks, Karl Kotas shamelessly displays his work as a graphic artist, painter, cartoonist, independent publisher, and art director on his home page. The Virtual Gallery has collages with grafitti-esque images of neon camels, women with five eyes, and alligators in suits. Kotas also creates an adult comic book series called ³Vent,³ featuring semi-nude lions wearing go-go boots. For bizarre erotica on the net, sneak over to the erotica section, which exhibits an odd digital mirage of nude women.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 6

Scultura Arts Forum
URL: http://www.rain.org/~scultura/art.html
Category: Art
Issue: 0496
Content Quality: Not Rated
Aesthetic Quality: Not Rated
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Bonnie J. Burton
At Scultura, everything has a price. This online gallery is more like a shopping mart, encouraging visitors to buy art, pay for a membership, and browse classifieds. After swimming through the dollar signs, visitors can enjoy a broad spectrum of art from abstract oil paintings to Crayola portraits drawn on brown paper bags. The Global Arts links page is scarce ‹ perhaps because this online gallery charges $199 to link your site to Scultura. If Scultura focused more on tuning in to, instead of cashing in on, the Internet artist community, this site would be worth its price in pixels.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 6

Post Industrial Potrero Hill
URL: http://www.dbarchitect.com/~db/g2/
Category: Art
Issue: 0496
Content Quality: Not Rated
Aesthetic Quality: Not Rated
TechnoSmart Quality: Poor
Site of the Month: No
Author: Shel Kimen
Examine the atmosphere within an artists¹ live-work space collective on San Francisco¹s Potrero Hill. Drown yourself in wonderful architectural drawings, or research the history of the group members as they fought to keep their previous space, a renovated hotel on Geary Street that was home to many artistic legends: Janis Joplin, Wes Wilton and Terry Fox. This site is well-designed and presented, although, when I wrote this review, the weekly newsletter was a few months behind.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 6

Internet Art Emporium
URL: http://www.infinity.ca/icreate/
Category: Art
Issue: 0496
Content Quality: Not Rated
Aesthetic Quality: Not Rated
TechnoSmart Quality: Poor
Site of the Month: No
Author: Lydia Schwartz
The Art Emporium may not be magnetically captivating ‹ could anything sporting the name ³emporium² be captivating? ‹ but it certainly has its art-added value. The site features works from esteemed and not-yet-esteemed artists worldwide, with hopes that Web surfers may want to spend some money. Pricing and ordering information is well-displayed; however, the site¹s proprietors have yet to initiate any support of online transactions (though you could place, not *pay* for, an order via e-mail). The Emporium also includes the ubiquitous link list of other art-related resources. It is indeed well organized and useful.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 6

New Mexico Album
URL: http://www-swiss.ai.mit.edu/philg/new-mexico/album.html
Category: Art
Issue: 0496
Content Quality: Not Rated
Aesthetic Quality: Not Rated
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Bonnie J. Burton
Chili pepper vistas and orange sunsets saturate Philip Greenspun¹s online photo essay about New Mexico. This unique take on the Land of Enchantment explores the housing crunch, satellite dish invasions, and native people hiding from Sante Fe yuppies. The site is only one page long with a few scattered sentences and a total of 17 photos. Created by the same guy who brought us the popular travel Web diary Travels With Samantha, this photo journal falls short, and needs more personality to justify its download time.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 5

Welcome to Cyberlab 7
URL: http://www.well.com/user/tcircus/Cyberlab7/index.html
Category: Art
Issue: 0396
Content Quality: Not Rated
Aesthetic Quality: Not Rated
TechnoSmart Quality: Poor
Site of the Month: No
Author: Shel Kimen
Art for the Millennium. Well, it could have been good. It starts off with a sharp, new agey, dreamy logo and a pitch about blending art and technology. There are lofty headings ‹ Visual Realities, Millennium Events, and Planet Change Projects. The problem is that not one of the interactive video clips or links to events or "projects" went anywhere beyond an error 404 (File Not Found.) I must ask: Are our Millennium prophets slacking, or are they just a mess at using HTML?
Overall Rating (out of 18): 4

Mary Ann King
URL: http://www.interedge.com/MaryAnneHome.html
Category: Art
Issue: 0596
Content Quality: Not Rated
Aesthetic Quality: Not Rated
TechnoSmart Quality: Good
Site of the Month: No
Author: Bonnie J. Burton
She wants to sell you an eggplant for $95. Actually, she wants to sell a painting of an eggplant still life from her Web site. This Kansas artist is not alone in her quest to sell artwork online, but the site offers nothing more than a list of paintings, small thumbnail images, and, of course, ordering information. Mary Ann could have done a better service to the Internet community by explaining why these painting have meaning, and she could have made the art community proud by incorporating the net as a learning experience ‹ not a financial shortcut.
Overall Rating (out of 18): 4