Being an artist on the Internet affords an amazing opportunity to showcase one's talents to the entire world.

It also can consume an artist's precious time as they run around uploading the same pictures to gallery after gallery in the quest for maximum exposure.

I've longed for some kind of common API that will link several galleries to one another, offering an "upload once, showcase everywhere” feature that would completely eliminate the need for this jogging around. But the odds of such a thing happening are pretty much nil, since it would involve a standardization of features and metadata across all galleries.

Some days I wish we could go back to when a personal web site was enough, a single storefront where word of mouth lead the curious to observe and follow an artist's works (and lets not forget the webring function).

Such personal web sites still exist, but they've mostly turned into portfolio sites. Most of the action is confined to art communities ...