By Annie Hollingsworth Artlurker.com, Miami’s notorious art and culture blog, is now three years old. In that short time, other local blogs have come and gone, but Artlurker’s founder and editor Tom Hollingworth has kept the website running strong, even though he just left town on a vegetable oil powered bus converted into a makeshift living space. Meanwhile, back in Miami, he’s keeping in touch with local collaborators and Artlurker.com is moving ahead: the website will soon announce the winner of the Knight-funded 2011 Writer’s Prize, a contest aimed and encouraging critical writing in Miami. Recently, last year’s prizewinner Annie Hollingsworth (no relation to Tom) spoke with him about the history of the website and his new nomadic life.

What is the Artlurker origin story? When I moved to Miami in 2006, I worked for galleries and collections for maybe a year or two. I realized that, by working in the commercial arena, I had grown somewhat separate from the community. I wanted to be more involved so I decided to become an art writer. I started writing for the few magazines I could find, and I kept a portfolio of my writing on a Blogger account. After a while people were talking about the writing I’d been doing and I thought, I’ll just turn the Blogger account into a website, to turn it into a Miami blog. In the spring of 2008 I bought the Artlurker.com domain.

Is your audience mainly in Miami or do you have audience around the country, around the world? Through WordPress I’m able to see the statistics for the website and I see how many people are viewing it in all the different countries. Mainly the audience is American and I do have a strong local following.

What does a blog allow you to do for the community that you couldn’t do in a gallery? When I was working for the gallery and I would engage with artists, there was always this strange filter. I felt like the interaction was always commercially based ­– I was a representative of a prominent gallery and they were an artist who either was or was not represented. I found it strange to be interacting in this pre-established hierarchy, or natural order. It’s funny, because the minute I started to become an art critic, a similar but different filter came up because people were always looking for press. But in the first few years when I was getting to know gallery owners on a personal level and doing a lot of studio visits, trying to find out as much as I could about Miami and how everything works here, there wasn’t really an impetus for me to be there other than my own personal interest, which was refreshing.

You were looking for more genuine interactions. I mean, people always want something. And I always want something. Obviously everyone’s looking to make the most out of every situation. But running a new publication in Miami was exciting. I did it because I wanted to support Miami arts and I felt like the community was supporting me too because I found that a lot of doors opened. Even foundations, like the Knight Foundation, they’ve been very communicative and generous. They provided the money that I needed to start the Writer’s Prize. I’ve always felt that it’s very easy to get along here in the art world. Everybody is looking to help each other out. You can go out and you can hang out with the big names in Miami. It’s not like they all go somewhere else. It’s a small scene. At the beginning, I didn’t have really a sense of what the community was, and it wasn’t until later that I really comprehended my role.

I noticed that other websites were linking to Artlurker. I knew that people were talking about it and I got the sense that it was becoming a resource on Miami. And I had other publications coming to Miami that would use me as a point of reference. If you Googled “Miami art blog,” then you would get me, you’d get Miami Art Exchange, maybe you’d get Alfredo Triff’s Spanish publication, Tu Miami. But I became the go-to guy for the inside scoop on the Miami art scene.

When you first started, what were you writing about? I would go to exhibitions and I would write about them. At night, after everyone had gone to bed, I would open up artlurker and just start writing, drafting out all these different stories, like ideas that I had, studio visits with artists, planning out a calendar of the next few weeks of what posts I was going to do. I grew up with a lot of exposure to early variety shows, like Vic Reeves, and a lot of one-set stage performances, and I think a lot of that bled through into the early posts on Artlurker. For one series, I would go around and interview Miami-based artists about their bathing habits and it was totally tongue in cheek. It was intended to reveal some great truth but in reality it was just a bit of fun. I just wanted to make an interesting publication, and I was inspired a lot by other publications that I was reading, like The Onion. I played around with about every strategy on the website that I could think of. But it’s always been about the art.

Has the website changed a lot? My writing has certainly gotten a lot better. I look back at the first few posts I was doing. It was just reviews, obviously one-sided but pretty uninteresting reviews of exhibitions in Miami. And then as it went on, I got more comfortable with the interview format, and started to write about things that were going on outside of Miami. I also gained access to a lot of other things that were happening. You know, hybrid music/dance/art performance projects. I’d find myself going out to warehouses to see noise events or meet people who weren’t immediately in the Miami contemporary gallery art world. That changed the publication and it changed the way that I write, for the better.

To write, and maintain a blog, and to be so consistent with it the way you’ve been is an enormous amount of work, and yet for you it was always a labor of love, not a source of income. It was never necessary for me to make money through the website so I never prioritized it. Like with art-making, I think it’s really important to keep your work separate from the support system. Artlurker was never a job. I think if I’d approached it as a money-making enterprise, I would have given it up a long time before now.

And now you have the support of other writers. Yes, people keep it going. I have my regular writers and I’m always in touch with them. They’re always talking about things that they’re interested in and I’m always cajoling them to write about it.

I noticed in getting to know you that you have a tendency to be a creative matchmaker, connecting different artists who have something to learn from each other. I’m often in conversation with people about projects that are going to happen. I never really thought about myself as a matchmaker or a facilitator really. But I’ve worked intimately with a lot of the artists and galleries in Miami and I know a lot of people so it must just naturally happen.

It’s the natural by-product of your engagement with the community. Yeah, one of many. You put your feelers out and you’re working with the community and the community is working with you. I like it when I can introduce people, but I’m not that type of person that will be at an art opening just networking. That would almost be abhorrent to me. I like to make legitimate friendship connections with people, and I’m interested in new people. If I can help to make more connections in the brain of Miami, fire off more neurons, awesome.

With a blog you get information out there immediately. What is the impact of such a quick turnaround? When you have a blog, you feel that you’ve gotta get that scoop. You’re in charge of the date of publication. You can come back from an art show, and sit up and write about it, it’s just too much temptation to pass up. It’s strange because you have this imagined audience that will be logging on first thing in the morning and reading about it, but in reality, the audience is kind of real. People do check in to see what’s happening and you feel that you have this duty within the community.

Another thing to consider is digestibility. I really value contemplative, meditative reading as opposed to surfing for information. Like you would get from a book. But I also see the market for more quick-fix skimming. With the blog I was always conscious that there was that issue – the posts have to be digestible. But I want to invite people to spend some time on the website, thinking about things, reading long articles uninterrupted by ads. That halfway point between a book and a website is interesting.

After I started the blog, everyone was talking about the decline of the printed page and the value of websites. Then people started to talk about the stupification of America and how there are no standards for blogs because anyone can write them and, you know, it’s all rubbish. You’re your own personal censor and the more information that’s out there, the better.

Tell me what you’re doing now. You’ve just left town and at this very moment you’re on a bus in West Virginia. I’m conducting a national survey of alternative energy projects. I’m going around the country visiting a bunch of off-grid projects, ranging from solar projects to various types of new engines and new fuels, all the way through to crazy people who are stockpiling food and arms, barricading themselves in preparation for an impending apocalypse. And I’m doing it all on a waste vegetable oil and solar-powered Greyhound with the aim of generating content for Transitantenna.com, a website that will function as an educational resource for anyone that wants to live with increased independence from infrastructure. And I took my family with me. And my two cats.

Your cats are living on the bus? Yeah, they hate it, but at least they come back. One of my cats got shot the other day. Someone took a pot-shot at it with an air rifle. We found a pellet in its tail. So this life is not without its dramas. But we’re currently in West Virginia, we’re converting another bus to vegetable oil and then we’re heading up to New York via Baltimore for some performance pieces that we want to see.

What does the future hold for Artlurker, and how does Transit Antenna factor in? No doubt the transit antenna project will be featured on Artlurker. We are a project that is coming out of Miami, we’re from Miami, I’m the founder of Artlurker and I’m now on the road. Also, if I go into a city, let’s say I go into Portland, and I see a show that I really like or one that I really hate, I would obviously consider writing it up for Artlurker because Transit Antenna is not a critical publication and I still enjoy writing about contemporary art. Mostly, now that I’ve left town, I’m the editor. I have people submitting to me and I’m developing new writers outside of town. Generally people seem to find value in Artlurker, not just because it’s Artlurker but because it’s a platform, it’s a resource, and I keep it pretty open. I’m excited that there is interest in the website because I’ve poured my heart and soul and hours and hours of my life into it.

Artlurker.com is a Miami-based online community forum for the contemporary arts. The 2011 Writer’s Prize, generously supported by the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and donations received from readers, accepted submissions through May 4^th, 2011. The winner will be announced on May 14^th. For more information, visit www.artlurker.com