Special Thanks

Thanks, Mark, for letting your readers know about the Art of Possibility textile collection launching in October at the Houston Quilt Market.

Can't wait to see you there!

The Delicate Balance

I want to keep everyone informed about Art of Possibility's progress as a business and change agent and we've had some boy-howdy successes, but now I have a new brand management fear to add to my list of commerce paranoias: winding up on Tweeting Too Hard's aggregate of blowhard tweets.

See, we have a lot to shout from the mountaintops and people who take a genuine interest in the work we're doing, but out of context we'd just look like ... me. With 30 drinks in me. Is perception reality? maybe I'm focused too much on being understood than being understanding, or averting misunderstanding, or caught up in my own cheerleading while not depriving folks of learning about our ups and downs. It's just been a lot of ups lately.

We'll take 'em when we can get 'em.

And therein resides the dilemma: sharing our glad tidings without coming across as boastful, self-important bores.

At the risk of overthinking the latest news, thanks to:

• The Cincinnati Enquirer
• The kokomo Tribune
• The Kentucky Enquirer
• Hot Spots magazine
• Elk City Daily News

for your recent coverage. It means a lot to us to share our message with others and we love you for caring about us.

Off the Grid

Sitting at the Lake watching the moonbeams dance reflecting on the water, listening to guitar ballads, fireflies – the coolest insects ever – illuminating their lazy trajectory, with spartan distant fireworks and the blue-black night's canopy over the verdant slopes to the water, I revel in the sublime moments off the grid.
Roman candles across the lake, the subtle sizzle of the neighbor's grilled fragrant goodness wafting through the screen porch of the log cabin, hand hewn walls from the land on which they stand, I delight in how connected I am to it all when I disconnect from the cloud that's responsible for 90% of the items on my task list that I need the vacation from in the first place.

As the momentum for Art of Possibility has accelerated I'm again leaping outside my comfort zone and the holiday break has been a great chance to renew, restore and remember how damn much fun it all is. Anyone reading this, feel free at any time to remind me of the fun of it all. I get caught up in the doing and forget how deeply I love my life – all of it.

Tomorrow we pack up coolers, kids & dogs and drive on the two-lane ribbons through the corn fields, across the one-lane iron bridge, easing ourselves toward the Interstate that leads back to the airport, as we gently close the story of the 4th at the Lake and catalog its moments of delight, laughter, minor annoyance with a slathering of SPF 45, I'll take home a joyful collection of stories and snapshots of the spaces opened for sharing love.

Sharing Our Message of Hope

Thanks to our friends in the media for sharing our message of hope with their readers.

- MomFinds Daily Blog

- Jennifer Wang of Enterpreneur

And - a PodCast on the Dino Herbert Show.

Exploring Creative Expression

I'm off to corn country shortly to enjoy friend and fellow artist Tamar Assaf's participation in The Fields Project. Tamar is Hebrew for fabulous and the selection of her work for this annual celebration of art and agriculture creates not just beauty but also an excuse for me to road trip (via commercial airline, naturally. I'm a lot closer to hip replacement than I am the hip college scene) to the Land of Lincoln where I shall eat tomatoes and corn from local farmers all day every day while talking about how good the food is, which is the way of my people. We are a people of Grammas offering seconds, of long, lazy discussions of string bean varieties (go, Kentucky Wonder, go!) and of watermelon slices so sweet you'll weep with the glory of the divine mystery that is summer eatin'. Art and agriculture belong together. The smell of grilling burgers and sunblock, the sweet nectar of a peach, sleeve-wiped and juicy fresh from the tree, the moments sublime and cuisine exquisite, will kick off hot fun in the summertime for me. See you there.

Art of Possibility on Art Buyer

Oh Look! An Art of Possibility Studios article scavenger hunt!

(You'll find us on p.34).

Bloggus Interruptus

We're doing our part to stimulate the economy by having a kid paint the entire interior of the house. A sunny yellow living space and cool sage resting spaces will enhance our lives and keep someone out of work in motion while the downturn trundles along. The thing about having your house painted? It's like moving cross country, one room at a time.

Unlike moving cross country, though, there's no "stop" to your life while your brother-in-law drives the truck from sea to shining sea. Instead daily life continues amidst a hubbub of home furnishings and the chaos of cardboard boxes. Compounding the drop cloth drama is a home-based business, so I get no reprieve from the tumult while I'm at work all day.

And with Surtex and Licensing just around the corner my work load skyrockets so I have a lovely aerial view of the pandemonium I hath wrought.

I just took three paragraphs to say "I'm busy."

As such, expect bloggus interruptus; less frequent posts while I ride the wave of commerce (my economy is booming, frankly. I keep costs low and work like a field hand and y'know? Art of Possibility is doing o-kay) but I'll tweet the big deals and hope to post when interesting ideas catch my imagination.

It's That You Play the Game

Friendships may or may not translate into good business, but good business invariably grows into lasting friendships.

I'd like to introduce another upstart, friendly, fun, artist-founded company to the growing list of friends of Art of Possibility: Sandy Parker's Phenominoes®. Sandy founded Deep in the ART of Texas to create affordable, wearable art and generate jobs in her community, a place I lovingly described as "not California."

Sandy found my work online, called, and we just love one another's unique, independent goals and are now working at the intersection of those objectives, making both Art of Possibility and Phenominoes better for the shared effort.


We chose 27 different great paintings by George Mendoza and me for our first collection. Each domino pendant has a cleverly designed hook so you can easily transfer it onto other necklaces to add a little play to any ensemble.

Art of Possibility on ABC News

Art of Possibility was profiled on the 6:00 news, by ABC's SF affiliate Channel 7.

Watch it here.

The Evolution of a Brand

To those who are checking in, Art of Possibility didn't make the Echoing Green finals. In their supreme coolness, however, I can get the judges' unredacted notes (anonymized, naturally) so I can see how my concept was perceived by others more clueful than I.

I'll keep you posted and you know I deeply appreciate your support.

And today I realized I'm not really an art agency in any traditional understanding of agency. My not adapting my language to describe what I do as the business has evolved created significant confusion. So after I finish this I'll begin calling Art of Possibility an art brand. Period. To build that brand it represents artists but that's where the similarities between the work I'm doing and a standard art
agency end.

We represent artists, but we also help them through professional development and creating an infrastructure that facilitates their success. When I started the business it was because I saw market gaps that limited opportunity for artists with disabilities and I adopted a traditional model, then line item by line item, adjusted it to be positioned for optimum success. In those line item transitions I
moved away from the tried-and-true into the vast enormity of our shared potential.

It's into that potential that I drive forward, always exploring, and as I look over my shoulder and see the limits of the old vocabulary I realize I must advance, not cling to the ordinary so my hands are free to grasp the extraordinary as I reach for it.

How Does Your Life Matter?

"The Call" usually comes with a lengthy Latin-based diagnosis, a medical mystery shrouded in grafted syllables of a dead language. Anyone who's done any amount of living has gotten "the Call" and has paused.

Work can wait. Errands will keep. Inhale. Listen. A nearby spring bird declaring its sole right to the elm. A distant motor accelerates and fades. The fabric of the draperies lets loose a gentle shimmy in recognition of the invisible force of the wind upon it. Email will be there later. It's not going anywhere. Inhale.

Elle's surgery is scheduled; what dates are we available for a pre-surgical party to give love? Calendars, usually the boss, can be cleared. We'll be there. Y'know, we have a guest room if Elle needs a recovery place; I work from home; I can be here; feeble, desperate bids for uniting against the C word - recurring at 46 - inhale.

I'm much more comfortable with my own mortality than I am the mortality of friends. It's a control thing I guess. I joke with my husband on lazy weeknights as we Tivo through commercials that he can just put me down like Old Yeller if I crumble.

The crumbling of others, though, digs deep into my gut, into that adolescent stick-girl obsessed with fairness, fists clenched, ready to show you all when she grows up. A call for justice, sunburned shoulders and scabbed elbows, lacking in life experience to see the big wheel, to know that fortunes ebb and flow.

Fifteen minutes, maybe twenty pass. I'll do the next thing, the next work of my workday. It matters. Being able to create a path for others to continue creating, that matters. Carefully formulating a way to connect the disconnected matters. Giving love through the difficulties matters.

Giving love matters.

Love matters.

Meet the Reasons I Love What I Do: Enid Swift

Enid found Art of Possibility through an open call on VSA and I immediately loved her work. Tired of simplistic, childish patterns I found a complexity and maturity in her aesthetic that I believe in completely, mostly because she designs
patterns I want.

Enid's also the only artist with us who has repaired Chinook helicopters.

de Young and de Artest

Ketra will have work featured in Art Slam 2009 at the MH de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park, San Francisco, from 1:00-3:00 p.m. on Saturday, March 28.

An expansive slide show of works by disabled artists will be shown in the Koret Auditorium as part of the de Young's Access Advisors annual event, celebrating the diversity of creativity that emerges from disability.

The 2009 Art Slam marks the third year of the event and Ketra's participation in it.

AOP an Editors' Pick

Art of Possibility elegant floral notepads are Editor's Pick at ShoppingByMail.

Art beyond limitation

Without getting into a big drama about who forgot to schedule what deadline, the past couple days we've been scrambling around the house trying to build frames for three original canvases that have to ship Wednesday.

I'd stalled getting the works framed because, well, nobody's worse at choosing frames than me. I'm just terrible at it. But work for a national juried group show needs to look national caliber, so frame we must.

Philosophically, paintings are like boob jobs and frames are like apparel: you can toss on a t-shirt or slip into a sexy little off-the-shoulder number; it's still a boob job. But you wouldn't show up to the cotillion in the same clothes you wear to rake leaves so we went frame shopping on the fly and found no store in our area with ready made frames that would work. In a shop aisle decision we chose to buy frames larger than the works and cannibalize them with the compound miter saw to build our own from the materials, discarding the unused bits. (There are no wholesale framers in our area, only retail, so the markup for custom framing is ridiculous for an artist who is, essentially, buying a manufactured part for a product.)

My sweet hubby is doing all the measuring twice and cutting once since he's uncomfortable with my using the compound miter saw. He wouldn't even think about it if I weren't blind, but given how little I see he opts for the sensible. I guess he likes me with all ten fingers.

When it comes to chop saws, I hit a limit. "Art beyond limitation" doesn't mean I get superpowers. If I did get superpowers I'd definitely want to accessorize with a cape. Nothing says "superpowers" like a cape. "Art beyond limitation" has more to do with the transcendent quality of people coming together to achieve something none of them could do solo. Even a one-man play has a page of credits in the program.

I'm deeply appreciative of the people whose talents are making Art of Possibility Studios successful. It may be an obtuse reference, but with great optimism I recall Gary Larson's "The Far Side" cartoon with the two spiders and the web spanning the bottom of the sliding board, "If we pull this off, we eat like kings!"

The Wolf Girl of Thailand

If you pick up the Mar. 9 "National Examiner" with SHOWDOWN! CAMILLA ATTACKS KATE! "YOU'LL NEVER BE WILLIAM'S QUEEN"" on the cover and flip to p.37 (just a few pages before the Wolf Girl of Thailand) you'll find a page profiling me and touting AOP bookmarks.

Available at supermarket checkouts, 7-11s and such.

My sister said: "Now I have proof that our family is a freak show."

Bookmarks

Our bookmarks: accessories for the most stylish night table reading experience.

Here on GiftWare News.

A Whole New Shade of Weird

I'm no stranger to weirdness but last week I conversed with a woman whose ideas were ... out there.

She asked what I did and I explained that I founded Art of Possibility to represent physically disabled artists. She then launched into something she calls "people first language" where I'm supposed to say "artists with disabilities" to make her more comfortable, or "people who work as artists that have disabilities" or something. The "people" comes "first."

When I told her that I'm okay being a blind lady instead of a "lady with blindness" (which sounds utterly stupid to me) she insisted that she was Right.

Seeing as how I'm often fallible, I let her notion roll around my consciousness a couple days and, y'know, it just doesn't hold up. If she wants to say "person with disabilities" instead of "disabled" when personhood is understood, more power to her. But to try to shame me into speaking in a way that doesn't disturb her delicate sensibilities, when no matter what we call it, I still can't see, is just diverting attention from true, meaningful change.

To extrapolate, everyone knows if I say my husband is an engineer that he's a person who works in the field of engineering. No one thinks he's an artichoke or an iguana. Do we have to now describe all physical characteristics that way? "The red-haired boy" becomes "the boy with red hair" or is it only characteristics that make others uncomfortable because of their own biases?

Any sentient listener understands that physical limits of the physical world impair our opportunity as physically disabled, not other causes. It's physics. So for Art of Possibility, we'll go with brevity and sanity in our parlance.

To the "people first language" people, I'd recommend getting past your own shame and stop projecting your prejudices onto others who don't share them. Those of us doing the actual work of inclusion have enough to do without pandering to word games that don't improve our daily lives.

Whoever Said "Less is More" Wasn't Online

First I had to have an Idea. Then I had to have an idea and a website. Then I needed an idea, a web site and a blog. Then I needed an idea, a web site, a blog, and a myspace. Next I learned I absolutely had to have an idea, a web site, a blog, a myspace, and a facebook. Of course that wasn't enough; I really needed an idea, a web site, a blog, myspace, facebook, and twitter. And of course I've had linkedin all along. So what more could any entrepreneur need? Facebook fan page. That's right. Here and now, people. Livin' the dream.

AOPS in CHA

A quick pic from the CHA show in Anaheim Jan. 25-28:



Photo by Jen Norton.

Beauty vs. Barriers

With so little functional vision left the web has its limits for me. All the backgrounds, graphic buttons, Flash and fixed font sizes that make your design experience lovely render sites unusable for me. As a business decision when we set up aopstudios I commanded my web developer make the entire site accessible to screen readers and the outcome is black text on white background, a very retro, 1990s look.

Friends would gently ask, nudge and encourage "improvements," but I want the site to work for as many physical disabilities as possible. Access isn't an easy feat. A ramp to the door means nothing to a deaf person and a sign with an arrow doesn't offer guidance to a blind person. So although I understand that optimizing access gets really elemental, I also wanted a site that everyone could use.

Then I got the final, fateful nudge. In an email exchange with an artist who's a quad (and uses a silver dot on his forehead combined with an IR sensor to track his head movement so he can use a computer) he asked, "Hey, are you going to do something about that web site or is it supposed to look like that?"

Now Jen and Dean have been working to beautify and improve aopstudios. Maintaining a link to the screen reader accessible content and with its new consumer look and eComm component we'll be able to quell that haunting question, "... is it supposed to look like that?"

With Gratitude...

When I could still read for pleasure I devoured books. I always liked the Acknowledgements. Read 'em all. I like dedicating a page to gratitude. It may be the best use of the blog I've yet identified.

Thank you, Jennifer Norton. Friend and Art Director, with me at the point of origin as I grow this circle of love.

Thank you, Dean Collins. You're a sane and stable influence and I truly appreciate your commitment to having Art of Possibility Studios' site accessible.

Thank you, Cheryl Hodgson, for making LLC filing and trademark registration less scary. It's not often people love their lawyer, but hey, I'm building this brand on love and long hours. You supply both.

And thank you to the people who quietly care, who offer resources because they believe what I believe, because they want to see this work, because they are empowered to diligently and determinedly make a difference in the lives of others.

Lots of Choices, All Unsatisfying

I recently had an artist gently ask, "are you, um, going to do something about that web site?" The Art of Possibility looks lost in the 1990s – by design.

The site serves three constituencies: the trade, our customers; the general populace that takes an interest in art and disability; and the artists who seek out information on ways to share their work. Each constituency comes to us with a different motivation and each has a different expectation. To have as accessible a site as absolutely possible, with scalable fonts, no confounding rollovers or Flash (the world's most inaccessible web tool ever), we've sacrificed pretty.

The design sings with ease of use, fast loading pages and information at your fingertips, but does it stun the visitor with its beauty? Sigh. That's what led that artist to ask about my plans for the site. Atop the design conundrum we have the looming Orphan Works bill which could cause all artists to frantically redesign their public presence in a flurry of artistic self-defense. (The Orphan Works legislation essentially privatizes copyright law, sort of like hiring Blackwater to be your country's military.)

So I am open to suggestions! How do I maintain super-high accessibility, meet the speed of commerce, and also introduce our work to a general audience?

Kissie, Kissie

Thanks, Patti, for including our "Love" bookmark in your Valentine's Gift Guide.

We appreciate the help sharing our message of love that fuels our work as artists and our lives as your friends, neighbors, and lovers.

Participating in a World of Good

We made the semifinals in Echoing Green's 2009 Fellowship application process!

We'll be evaluated with 299 other world-changing enterprises. Good luck to our fellow change agents. Together we can transform lives. We might as well. We don't have anything better to do right now.

A Noble Calling or Just Doing What's Necessary?

I launched this business to transform lives.

I'm not a noble person. I'm a problem-solver.

I solve a problem for the artists by creating a path designed for their optimum achievement. People with disabilities can have a positive impact on our world if the infrastructure that supports that success exists. Well, now it does.

I solve a problem for manufacturers. In a marketplace crammed with lovely goods it's tough to differentiate your lovely product line from the other lovely product line. Art of Possibility® adorned products provide that differentiation.

I solve a problem for retailers. After training a consumer populace to hold out for the lowest possible price we give them a reason to not shave every nanocent off that margin. Because our entire brand concept involves us earning a living, paying full price regains its dignity.

I solve a problem for consumers who desperately want their purchases to mean something. By knowing that their purchase directly benefits a physically disabled artist choosing Art of Possibility® products connects those consumers with an important social mission of inclusion and compassion.

Caring is cool.

Diversity is Leadership

If November 4 proved one thing to me, it's that Diversity is Leadership. Yes, there's a compliance component, but the truly forward thinkers choose outside their comfort zone, stay open in their definitions, and encourage all people to excel. I wish to strengthen gifts and mitigate gaps. I dream big, I hope eternal, I support tirelessly.

Not because I'm noble. Far from it. I'm just solving a problem.