Sunday, May 4 to 29: The Spring Membership Show and the Ladies' Art Forum Exhibit. The opening reception is on Sunday, May 4, from 1 to 5 PM. Awards presented at 2 PM.

Sunday, June 8 to July 17: The LCAA National Juried Exhibition 2008. The opening reception is on Sunday, June 8, from 1 to 5 PM. Juror for the exhibit is Denise Green. Australian/American artist & writer. Awards presented at 2 PM.

At 12: 15 PM on May 1 I began to create this Lens on Squidoo. I began from Squidoo's home page at http://www.squidoo.com. I clicked on the words "Click here to start."
On the next page it told me what a lens was:

"What's a lens?"
From Squidoo:

* An insanely easy-to-build, single page online.
* Your signpost about something that matters to you.
* A place to recommend your favorite stuff.
* A popular way to get found more on the web.
* A free (yes, free) way to earn a royalty. For you or for charity.
* Word of mouth at your fingertips.
* Squiddylicious.
* Something you should have if you care about getting the word out, about selling something, about changing minds, about sharing info, or if you just love to create, express yourself, and play.

Then I clicked on the question, "Ready to make your own?" (meaning your own lens)
On the next page were two questions regarding whether I had an account or not. I selected the one for creating my first lens. Then I clicked, "Get Started!"
In "Step One" I was asked the question, "What is your lens about?" I typed in the "Lancaster County Art Association" and went to Step 2 where I was given four options to choose from:

I want to get the word out about Lancaster County Art Association (easiest option)
I'm gonna sell Lancaster County Art Association stuff and earn $$, for me or for charity (money maker!)
I want to make a list of my favorite things about Lancaster County Art Association (most popular)
I just want to do my own thing.

I chose getting the word out about the LCAA. Then I went to Step 3 where I had to choose something to use for the url for my lens.
Here are the instructions:

"Step 3: Title and URL"

Tip #1: Clever lens titles can make great first impressions. Have fun!
Tip #2: When picking your Squidoo URL, just fill in the blank where it says www.squidoo.com/_______. (So, if your lens is about daschunds, try adding the word dashchund to the box. If your lens is about making paper airplanes, add paperairplanes to the box. Sorry, no spaces or weird characters).

I chose lancastercountyartassociation. So the url for my lens would be: http://www.squidoo.com/lancastercountyartassociation
Then I needed to pick a category from a drop down box. I chose "Arts & Literature." I had to give it a rating. The rating I chose was "G Rated Material Safe for ages and eyeballs."
In Step 4 I was given the option to choose "keywords" for my lens:

"Step 4: Help people find your lens
Keywords (or "tags") are really important in helping people find your lens. Think about the search words someone might put into Google when he's looking for info on your topic. Those would be your lens tags."

"The best keyword for my lens is:
And 3 more good ones are:
(Optional)"

I chose "Lancaster County Art Association" for the first keyword. Squidoo offered me the opportunity to have three more keywords. I typed in three keywords: artist, exhibit, gallery.

In Step 5 Squidoo asked me how I wanted to be paid.

"Step 5: How do you want to get paid?"

"Yep, your lenses earn royalties! For some lensmasters, it's just a drop in the bucket. Others are earning hundreds of dollars every month. If you're not in it for the money, try giving. Squidoo's goal is to make it really easy for you to donate to good causes, just by making a lens."

I could choose to receive money myself or choose a specific charity or let Squidoo choose the charity. Or I could choose a combination of both receiving money and donating to charity. Since there wasn't an option (at this time) to choose the LCAA, I chose the Grameen Foundation but I will look into whether the LCAA can be added to the list of charities from which to choose.

In Step 6 I needed to enter an email address so that Squidoo could communicate with me. I also needed to enter my real name, choose a user name and a password, and read and accept their "Terms of Service." which begins with the following:

"What's Squidoo? Squidoo is the free (yes, free), simple tool that makes it easy for you to publish your passions online and share real, human recommendations on the web. (You could even earn a royalty for charity, too). It's also a community of the smartest experts online. From authors and astronauts to marketers and musicians, to cat lovers and seahorse keepers and quiltmakers and video gamers and teachers and... well, everyone... anyone with something to say, share, promote and recommend is welcome on Squidoo. All you need to do is agree to the below Terms of Service, which, as you'll see, generally cover: 1) Our Zero Tolerance policy about Spamming and 2) The Squidoo Respect Everyone policy (for fellow community members, bloggers, people on and offline everywhere)"
"You must be at least 18 years of age."

It took me several tries before I found a User Name and had entered it with no spaces so that it was accepted by Squidoo. Before I checked my email for my Squidoo confirmation, I began to edit my LCAA lens but when I tried to upload a photo of the LCAA building, it would not continue. I realized that I should check my email and confirm my new account. Once I did that, I was able to continue to edit my lens. I added a description of the LCAA and a photo. It was now 1:17 PM. I had been working on this for an hour but that includes my writing everything down as I went along and also putting in two loads of laundry into the washing machine.

Subsequently I added some biographical information about myself to my profile and uploaded an image of myself that I had on my computer. This image did not appear on the page I was editing but was visible when I went to the lens page I had created. This page is at this url: http://www.squidoo.com/lancastercountyartassociation

I continued to edit the lens. I added a module for Amazon books and entered search terms so that art books would appear in the module. If someone buys art books through our lens, the a portion of the profits will go to the Grameen Foundation. I added a Guest Book. I added links to members' websites. This last part required some knowledge of HTML so it wouldn't be easy for someone who didn't understand HTML at all. (But later I discovered that there is a Link Module that is much easier to add and edit to create a list of links.)

It is now 2:27 PM. This is all I have time for today. Later I will add some of our upcoming events to the lens. There are ads on the lens now for Amazon books, Lancaster vacation places, and Las Vegas mural art, all of which apparently will generate revenue. I have added a link to the lens on our own website's Members' Linkspage, The Lancaster County Art Association now has a Squidoo lens. Let's see what happens next!

Note: The next day and the day after that I worked more on the lens, adding Polaroid Modules and the correct Links Module and a Table of Contents Module and tonight another Text Module. This is like a vacuum that craves something to fill it up. So you can fill it and fill it and fill it. I am thinking of that plant in that strange movie. The plant that cries, "Feed me! Feed me!" Feed the Lens!