I received this email late yesterday evening:
Hi Mr. Illingworth,
My name is Catherine Hsieh. I am an associate editor at NY Arts Magazine/Art Fairs International (www.nyartsmagazine.com / www.artfairsinternational.com). NY Arts Magazine/Art Fairs International is a quarterly international contemporary art magazine and Web sites with a readership of 60,000.
As of now, we are preparing for our Spring Issue and are extremely interested in featuring you in this next issue. I was wondering if you could provide us with a 400-word artist’s statement. This can be a pre-existing statement from a Web site or exhibition, but we do prefer an original text.
Just to explain, we ask for about 400 words from the artist that give our readers a great insight into his/her work, his/her process, and him/her as an artist. We want the artist to say what it is s/he has always wanted people to know about or see in his/her work. Also, if you could kindly supply us with 3 to 5 high-resolution (300 DPI, 10 inches wide) images, plus captions (Artist, Title, Year. Medium, dimensions. Courtesy of…), to go alongside the text, that would be much appreciated.
NY Arts Magazine is a home for artists, curators, galleries as well as writers to voice their ideas on the contemporary art world. Your assistance will be greatly appreciated. Please let me know. Thank you so much in advance.
Looking forward to hearing from you,
Catherine
—
Catherine Y. Hsieh
Associate Editor
NY Arts Magazine
473 Broadway, 7th Floor
New York, NY 10013
212-274-8993
I never, ever, use links in emails unless they are from a source I know, so I typed in the web address and received an error message (this turned out to be a fortunate coincidence). Concerned, I searched in Google, and lo – over 700,000 results on the NY Arts Magazine scam. The web site is up and running this morning, and appears as credible as the email sounds. Incidentally, I checked my stats and they had googled my name, presumably from an article or exhibition, so they aren’t necessarily only using the likes of A-N and Axis.
