Sculpture:  Her Story, 10.5"t x 6.5"w x 9"d, one of a kind, hand made clay finished in acrylics with beads, by Tammy Vitale

Am looking into participating at the Philadelphia Buyers Market (wholesale only) in February.  Expensive but my exact target market, sponsored by the folks who print both American Style and Niche magazines.  All ready to go except I can’t get my software to copy jpegs to a disc.  At this state of the game how hard can that possibly be?  And yet my software (Sonic) insists it will only take things with extensions like ISO and some other unidentifiable extensions I have never in my life seen.  And the spaces are dwindling as we speak (and of course, it’s also juried).  I refuse to take this as a sign of anything than I need to get more computer literate. 

I have a yoga session today that will start me off on yoga and meditation first thing every morning (private, tailored to my needs – hey, I’m worth it!), and then I’ll go across the bridge, on Friday, at rush hour, to talk with the Staples folks and see if they can sell me a program or tell me what’s up with mine.  And if not there, then on down to Best Buy.  There’s a part of me that’s very anxious about not getting in in time (it’s perfect!) and a part of me that’s terrified of the money (it’s expensive!) so I guess I’m balanced. 

Here’s today’s creation, Creation, for Art Every Day Month, inspired by the idea of mandalas, which I think I’ll explore a bit more during the month.  This actually resurrects  putting hands in pictures.  When I first started back painting in ’94, hands wound up in everything I painted or drew.  Then they went away.  And here they come again.  The ribbon looking things too.  Decided to go for feeling and not execution.  If I start worrying about how it’s going to look I’ll just freeze up.  And the whole point of Art Every Day for me is to practice not freezing up!

thought for the day:  A mandala is an art form based upon the idea of automatic drawing.  Mandala is a Sanskrit word referring to any representation of the cosmos in relation to man [or woman, ahem].  Ancient cultures used mandalas as focus points for their meditations.  Drawing a mandala is an act of meditation that brings unconscious thought into being on the paper.  The mandala appears in the art of many cultures, quite often as a balanced pattern of symbolic forms….Beginning with Carl Jung, psychologists have interpreted symbols drawn within  the mandala circle as revelations of the personality.  Nita Leland, The New Creative Artist:  A Guide to Developing Your Creative Spirit