Drawn

Hi everyone
Here is the followup to my challenge to you all to hunt up countries and artists in those countries that might be missed by Drawn! contributors like me. In retrospect I should have said I would post the TOP artists rather than the top three, as I don’t really like competitions and it is impossible to narrow it down like that when taste is so much a factor. And I’m the only judge. Ewww. So I’m going to post – separately, for bookmarking purposes, and in no particular order (there’s no first prize folks) – more than three whose work satisfied my criteria.

Ah yes, the criteria. I asked for an underrepresented country, and a great artist whose work is appropriate to Drawn! within that country. This got me in a bit of a pickle: what if there’s a country that is really, really off my map, but the artist nominated is sort of so-so? Also, what if all my fave picks are clustered in one geographical area? Wouldn’t that just exacerbate the marginalization of other areas, exactly what I’m trying not to do? Also, I had to throw in the bit about language as a barrier, so it seems more appropriate to stick to countries where English is not the official language. Yet making picks just based on being fair politically seems unfair artistically.

Argh.

So I picked several geographical areas, then found the most low-profile countries (to me) in that area, and then went for the artist I like best who was nominated.

Someone else might have done it differently. Certainly I cut some folks out who would have had priority had they not been in English-speaking countries that had tons of nominations (*cough* New Zealand – yes I know you are marginalized the way Canada is by the USA…but 3 kiwis nominated between them 16 artists! Somehow I think you won’t be ignored for long…). So, to make sure ALL deserving artists get due consideration, I am sending the other Drawn! contributors all the nominations, to sift through and pick what they like regardless of this project of mine here and its criteria.

And I don’t think a single one of my picks is so-so. Thank goodness there were enough great nominations that I would have had no problem posting these folks had I just found them by chance.