Good lord, I can rarely manage a blogpost a day (and if the last few weeks are any indication, even that statement is overly generous). Well, Duane Keiser impressively achieves this very feat every day on his blog. For a brief second, I thought - "hey! what a great idea for my new foundations class". Ha ha, no. Although if I did, I could probably start a "Hate Mail a Day" blog, and then I'd be famous.

However, Keiser effectively demonstrates the paradigm shift that web 2.0 technology means for even non-digital artists. At $150 a pop for his oddments, he's effectively transformed his success as a traditional media artist into an online success where he reaches a much wider audience.  It also demonstrates a brilliant use of web 2.0 as a business model (bear with me fellow art teachers, my brain turns to mush at the 'b' word too).   For me, the greatest assets of the 2.0 community are the aspects of sharing and collaboration and Kaiser is doing that too.  By publishing his work on the web he's sharing the digital version with everyone- however, he also is able to earn income by providing an opportunity to own an original piece of art as well.   This can be seen as an excellent example of how 2.0 culture - which is constantly navigating the dangerous waters  of copyright and appropriation, can do so successfully.  Keiser shares his beautiful work with all of his fans, who can download the images to their computers, show to their painting classes or, say, post on their art education blogs.   In this way, he makes profit in the original image, but not in the reproduced ones.   Perhaps this is a lesson that many in the music industry have already learned- that giving away their songs is an important way to build a fan base.