Honestly Ironbear I agreed with almost everything you said...I have been trying to say all along that I didn't like the way the poll was handled but I know that my other opinions have caused people to believe that I felt otherwise. I'll admit that I don't really care for Legume's work, actually to be completely specific, there was one piece of art he did that absolutely pissed me off and that changed my whole perspective on all of it..until that point I didn't really care. You can make the arguement that he has the right to make whatever he wants(which I agree with, BTW) but if he reserves that right then I equally have the right to feel offended by it if it offends me. You can also argue that the ability to really piss someone off with his work makes him a better artist and perhaps more deserving of the title which in some respects is probably true but that still doesn't change anything from where I am. After that image and the entire sequence of events that followed in the community I started looking for the negative and I don't think there is really anything that can change my mind about it, even now, although I did try to force myself to look at his work with a more open mind a few times(BTW, the pinup series looked really sad, and i don't mean the technique of it, they just all gave me the impression that he was groveling for sympathy somehow and always made me feel sorry for him every time I looked at one of them). But cheating is wrong and you cannot honestly say that Legume and the AOM following Legume didn't get their titles without some degree of cheating and I'm not talking about "self-promotion" either. If you know you weren't part of it, then you know my comments weren't directed at you. But if someone does cheat in any way to earn the artist of the month title, they will not get any sympathy from me if they start saying they were discriminated against by the admins in the final vote....the truth is, if they had to cheat on even the most minor level, then they do not deserve to be at that point anyway. Anyway, now my biggest objection at this point has been that people are still questioning the decision even after the winner was announced...that is just simply not fair to the person who got that award, even if it had been another artist(even Legume) I would still feel the same way about this.. Sorcha