First off, thank you for the overwhelmingly positive support you’ve all showered on Mormon Artist. It makes a world of difference. In the past two months since Issue 1 came out, we’ve had hundreds and hundreds of people read the magazine and almost six hundred people have joined the Facebook group—which isn’t bad for a small upstart magazine that popped up out of nowhere. We’ve also become part of a blog called The Red Brick Store, an exciting new collaboration among the editors of Mormon magazines and journals.

And here we are on our second issue. Originally we were planning to focus on the print edition of the magazine, but over the past month it has become clear that the only way to make that viable is with a lot of money, and that’s something we don’t have and probably won’t for a long, long time. So we’ve shifted our focus to the web edition (which is what almost everyone was reading anyway). We’ve redesigned our website to make the web experience a first-class citizen and are looking forward to what will be happening on that front in the future. Don’t worry, we’ll still offer a PDF of every issue, since about half of you are reading it that way. We’ll also continue to make issues available for print on demand via MagCloud. (But since we’re focusing on the web and are no longer constrained to keep the page count down, the MagCloud editions will get more expensive. Consider them to be the deluxe, premium package and then the bite won’t be as bad.)

A minor change that will have lasting repercussions is the splitting of the magazine into sections. They were unofficially there in the first issue, but we’ve made them overt now: Literature, Visual Arts, Music, and Film & Theatre, with an occasional Miscellanea sprouting up from issue to issue when warranted. We’re currently finding section editors to maintain these.

As part of this division into sections, we’re also expanding our content base beyond just interviews. In this issue we’ve got some photographs by Scott Jarvie and a short play by J. Scott Bronson, and in future issues we’ll include more artwork of all kinds, along with articles and essays and other types of content. Interviews will continue to be the main course, but we want to add more variety.

And to get there, we’re now opening the magazine to submissions. We’re excited. (See the submissions page for all the details.)

The next big step is international outreach. As I mentioned in my note in Issue 1, there are many LDS artists throughout the world but hardly anyone knows who they are. Let’s change that. While we’ll still continue to interview artists in the States, of course, I want to start featuring several international artists in each issue. If you know of any in your ward or from your mission or what have you, send us an email and let us know.

Other plans include contests, a database of places Mormon artists can submit their work to, and an artist directory on the website where artists can add their name, the types of work they do, and a link to their website. (We contemplated making a full-blown social network but decided against that since there are plenty of those already out there that do the job just fine, and people don’t need yet another site to check each day.)

If you want to help the magazine, the most important thing you can do right now is spread the word. Give people the URL (mormonartist.net). Invite them to the Facebook group (search for “Mormon Artist”). And also be sure to let people know we’re now looking for submissions.

Again, thanks for your support. We appreciate it. ❧