Dear readers, January 2006 has been a banner month for PORT and we continue to make enhancements to the site. To that end we have added a links page under our categories on the left. All of the Portland links either regularly provide info about the arts in the city or discuss some of the things that make Portland so appealing to arty people. The arts don't exist in a vaccum and Portland is a city blessed with an obsession for good food, walking not driving, hip urban communities as well as its hyperactive art scene. The artist blogs chosen aren't mere vanity sites or PR vehicles. These sites provide a window into their individual experiences, which may be of great help to other artists. The list will continue to grow as well.

As for the other links, check em out. I find that the web has greatly reduced the proprietary nature of some art world information. On the web everything becomes local. The two best art sites are Artnet's excellent magazine and Tyler Green's Modern Art Notes. Those two sites alone have made the rather small art world a great deal smaller.

In the next week PORT will be announcing our new calendar person and photoblogger, bringing our our professional paid staff to 6 (but have no illusions, this is still a labor of love). There will be a host of new sponsors added this week as well. Thank you sponsors, you make this groundbreaking experiment in online visual arts publishing possible. When we created PORT we saw it as an opportunity to evolve the blog form into a focused, content rich publication that raises the level of criticism in Portland, while providing a template for a new type of local arts writing that is internationally accessible and relevant.

Considering our readership #'s I'm pretty proud of our staff, readers, sponsors and Portland in general. It's an honor.

As a thank you we published four critically rich reviews this week, more than doubling the number of critical pieces published in the city for that time period. I'd also like to note the WWeek just published its first visual arts feature since October and the Portland Tribune had a nice piece on the Ovitz collection (two things we have been shouting from the rooftops about for some time). I don't see PORT as needing to take part in any of the typical reindeer games that dead tree press usually requires. We are here to catalyze, create and draw attention to worthy information on Art that is of interest to Portlanders (and because Portland is a pretty dynamic place, the rest of the world).

PORT is a very specialized kind of publication and Elizabeth Zimmer (a senior editor at The Village Voice), Matthew Stadler (moderator), myself, Jenn, and Katherine of PORT as well as Mike Merrill of urbanhonking.com, and PICA's Amanda Deutsch all discussed this in a forum during last year's PICA TBA festival. Simply put, arts writing is dying off as dead tree media gets increasingly squeezed economically. By specializing, PORT is merely one solution to a larger problem as intellegent critical information gets increasingly marginalized in traditional news media.