Big Wow to Eccentric Outsider Artist, John Dog
What would John Dog do?
by John DAgostino, Eccentric outsider Artist, a.k.a. The John Dog
I get obsessive sometimes about my web sites. I always want to keep them interesting. Put new things on them, add pictures, and links. I check my stats not too frequently to see if people are visiting them. I also check my page ranking for some of my key words, outsider artist, eccentric art, etc.. John Dog is one of my key words and one day I was checking yahoo search and found "What would John Dog do?" posted on Molly Goatwax’s Blog. Mrs. Molly Goatwax is an artist, poet, and pub owner of Molly’s Public House in Baltimore. Here is the item below.
July 13, 2005
What would John Dog do?
I have been invited by the education co-ordinator at the musuem to conduct a hands-on seminar in small collage for twenty people at a (winter) Holiday event. I have mixed feelings about this, because while it is an honor and a chance for "face time", there is no stipend and the offer has been extended to several artists in an effort to provide hands-on activities for the fund raising event. If my seminar is well recieved, it may lead to a more featured, paid attraction. It looks as if there might actually be some considerable outlay for materials. I’ve got a few days to think about it.
I had no idea why Molly used the name John Dog. I thought maybe it was a "Baltimore" expression, slang term for genius or something. Before I became a full time eccentric outsider artist I had many jobs in the real world. One of these jobs was as an education coordinator for a museum in Miami. I did this for 7 years. Time to make the Twilight Zone - do - do -do - do -do - do noise. Here she is sending out a question in cyber space to the John Dog - little did she know that she would soon get a reply from a John Dog with 7 years experience in museum education programming. Pretty much I told her that normally museums have budgets for these things so they can pay visiting artist or lecturers. I didn’t post my reply on the blog but e-mailed it to her. I thought maybe I would get an e-mail back saying, thanks blah, blah, blah. But I never got one and forgot about it.
Just the other day I was doing a John Dog search and checking my results and found another blog entry by Mrs. Goatwax. Here is the post below.
July 19, 2005
Big Wow
My post the other day about the quandry with doing a workshop at the museum was titled "What would John Dog do?", because when I fed the term "eccentric artist" into the search engine, there he was. I have never met nor communicated with Mr. DAgostino, aka John Dog so you can imagine how absolutely floored I was to find an e-mail from him in my in-box this morning. And rather than take umbrage with me for having invoked his name in vain, he gave me some good advice! I quote his missive, in summary: "John Dog says Do It on the condition that the education director (maybe with your help) creates a program and a budget for future workshops. I’m sure your artist friends will appreciate being included if they are justly compensated. It is a win-win situation for the museum, the artists, and the public." And, in viewing some of the links and threads from the sites that I went back and actually looked at (rather than just pluck his name from the search), I find a philosophy from which much more can be learned…besides that, he seems like a nice guy. Thank you, Mr. Dog
Thank you Molly. When I am in that wonderfully funky city of Baltimore I’ll have to stop in for a cold one. Also thanks for introducing me to Beer Church (a link I saw on your site). Although I am already a self-ordained minister in The Church of The Only True God becoming an official credentials as a minister in Beer Church would be pretty cool.
