Moving on?

I started this blog way back in 2006, that’s 11 years of blogging!  Of course, SO much has changed and happened since then, and in case you haven’t noticed, I have barely written here for the past few months.  A huge part of that is that my commitments have largely transferred over to Artprof.org, which is consuming all of my time lately. (in a good way!)

Working on Art Prof has been the greatest, most difficult challenge of my career so far.  It’s also been the most rewarding and exciting endeavor, where there is a surprise around every corner that I can never anticipate. Art Prof has also empowered me with a number of new skills:  site usability, web development, social media, video editing, shooting video to name just a few.  I’m teaching a Senior Seminar course at RISD this semester in the Printmaking department in which so many of these skills are relevant. We’ve covered artist websites, social media, cover letters, networking, the entire package of skills that I wish I had learned when I was in art school.

This process has gotten me thinking about my own website, claralieu.com, which has been woefully neglected as I’ve moved on to other pursuits. The site is terribly out of date in terms of design (it’s not even close to being mobile friendly) and was designed way back before sites like Squarespace and Wix existed which provide user friendly site templates.

I can’t believe I’m actually saying this, but I am seriously thinking about discontinuing this blog.  This blog will still exist in that it still has a lot of content that gets viewed every day, but between Artprof.org, my Instagram, and a soon-to-be revamped version of claralieu.com, I’m wondering if this blog is becoming too much of a dinosaur to continue. I’ve been wanting to combine my blog with claralieu.com for a while, and the WordPress theme I’m going to use is going to let me do that. Times and technology change, perhaps I need to take the leap and change too?

I don’t know, it’s tough to walk away from a blog I’ve invested so much time and effort into, but at the same time, I don’t want to leave one of my sites neglected.