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Totem Triptychs:
The Early Social Media Experiment


The 1998 “Totem Triptych” online collaboration was a precursor to Instagram that started in 2010. Swartzentruber avoided making each painting with authorial intent. He designed the work primarily as a stream of consciousness. He reached out to the writing community to contextualize the meaning of the art. Viewers emailed submissions describing the paintings. Within days these “texters” could see their posted on-line next to the artwork.  Swartzentruber’s vision was an early form of social media. This online collaboration was done in 1998, the year Google was founded. This social media experiment was six years before the introduction of Facebook. Some authors wrote about one painting. Two contributors, Marc Harshman (Poet Laureate of West Virginia), and British wordsmith Cleveland W. Gibson wrote text for all 36 triptychs. Commenting about online images is now a daily routine.

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Featured Writers

Marc Harshman
Poet and Storyteller Marc Harshman holds degrees from Bethany College, Yale University Divinity School, and the University of Pittsburgh. He received the Ezra Jack Keats / Kerlan Collection Fellowship from the University of Minnesota for research on Scandinavian myth and folklore. Recipient of the WV Arts Commission Fellowship in Poetry and a chapbook of poems, Rose of Sharon was published in 2002. Harshman's books have been published in Spanish, Danish, and Swedish.
As author of ten children's books. Only One was a Reading Rainbow review title on PBS TV and The Storm was a Junior Library Guild selection, a Smithsonian Notable Book for Children, a Children's Book Council Notable Book for Social Studies, and a Parent's Choice Award recipient.


Cleveland W. Gibson
British talent Cleveland W. Gibson,
is the author of Moon Dust and Billabongo. He resides in Faringdon, Oxfordshire, United Kingdom. He recently completed the Totem series. Gibson is a writer and an ESOL instructor who provides international education services to the Mediterranean, Middle East and South Asian.

Copyright Information: This project features the work of international writers who submitted work via literary magazine or directly to this site. Contributor agrees that the work is original and is legally available for publication. All creative work on this site is property of the creators and may not be reproduced or copied. Should a copyright violation be found the artist, or the literary magazines represented, hold no legal responsibility. This project has the right to use the text in exhibitions with the artwork in galleries, museums, and these web pages in Internet and CD format. If a commercial book publication is scheduled, fiscal compensation will be negotiated. Swartzentruber holds full editorial rights to include or exclude text for this project. Totem artwork and this publication is Swartzentruber ©
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