If you read this blog regularly, you know that I select not resolutions to guide me through me year, but one word.

This year’s word is extraordinary and my year is ever expanding to accommodate it!  Not to say that I’m always comfortable – mostly I feel stretched more than I thought possible.  But I am learning that extraordinary is created through daily, persistent ordinary.  And that’s extraordinary in itself!

In addition to the amazing energy moving in my own life, I am blessed to have extraordinary people around me who keep me inspired.

I’m going to share several with you today.

First up is the beautiful blog, The Havens.  Its creator, HealingMagicHands, always has lovely informative posts and when she writes about the environment she has created around her, it turns magical!  Please enjoy this post, fossils, as the first extraordinary thing…and note how it is a life-long commitment to having what she loves around her that has created the extraordinary out of what might, singularly, be considered ordinary.

Next up is the collaborative work of Ray Bogle and Dave Wardrup, two local creatives in Southern Maryland.  I don’t know Dave well, but Ray and I swap info all the time:  he gives me raku tips and I share marketing tips and galleries I know will fit his work.  Ray is just starting to think about marketing and I’m always trying to figure out raku (and he’s a master!) so it is a joyful trade.

Ray tells me that “just” throwing pots is a skill that many have and he was looking for a way to make his work special.  I’d say he accomplished his goal spectacularly!

The following work was recently created between Ray and Dave – you’d think they’d plotted this for years looking at the fit of ceramic and turned wood, but no.  Ray tells me that they did one or two initial sketches but he found himself blocked by trying to match something on paper (this from a guy who makes some of the most skillful thrown pots I’ve ever seen – isn’t it nice to know it happens to all of us?!) so he just threw his pots and then handed them off to Dave who finished them with wood.  This work is the result not of long years of learning each other’s methods and styles but of immediate, intuitive, collaborative work because they wanted to try it.  Note:  “just threw his pots” includes figuring out how to make the pots so the wood could fit in beautifully.  No “just” there, but we artists are nothing if not self-deprecating.   You can see more of Ray and Dave here.

White Crackle urn by Ray Bogle and Dave Wardrup

When you read The Havens and when you look at this beautiful work by Ray and Dave, do you have any question about their absolute love and commitment to what it is they are doing?  And can you see that it is love and commitment that elevates what could be just skill into something else entirely?!

Collecting fossils and making small altars, collaborating with a friend, or simply choosing a word and letting it guide you through the year can all turn extraordinary simply by your focus and commitment.  What you you doing to have a Hell Yes!  magically extraordinary kind of year?

Have you signed up for the Report out on my Artists’ Survey:  The Business of Art?  It’s coming out early May.

Wylde Women’s Wisdom:

If you’re this succesful doing work you don’t love, what could you do with work you do love?  Tama J. Kieves