Prose Tile:  Dream, hand-stamped, one of a kind wall tile; hangers may be removed and tile installed with regular tiles for more permanent home beautification.  4" x 6", by Tammy Vitale.  $22

Dear Readers – you are going to be the very first to know.  And right after you, my shop owners will know.

Effective January 1, 2008, My torsos will be created under a line called Sacred.  This line will have an absolute total of only 200 pieces a year created.  At the moment I’m thinking some combination of torsos and masks – my favorite pieces to make and the work that seems to fly out of the door.

All torsos will begin at $1,000 and will come with a story for the goddess attribute that they represent, and an amulet to wear to help the owner remember who she is by remembering that attribute.  Raku torsos will be slightly more in light of the difficulty in getting them through their process in tact.  Masks will be mostly raku and will start at $250.00.   All work will be sold outright:  wholesales to retailers (no more commission based sales) and directly to individual.

Each year’s line will have a special signature block for that year only.

All other lines will be discontinued – they have always been filler lines.  One Coach says:  identify your niche, identify your highest income producing product lines and forget the rest.  I believe this is most excellent advice!

This decision frees up an enormous amount of studio space, a likewise huge amount of psychic space, gives me time to pursue writing about my work for publication, and best of all awards all of my clients with immediately more valuable work on their walls because of their great eye and appreciation for the art that has been the gateway to this point in my career.  Yes – this is my art career. (doesn’t that just give you shivers?!  It does me!).

In January I will be going out to my shops and collecting all the pieces that are currently displayed on a commission basis.  Should the shop owner choose, s/he may purchase those pieces to sell.  They will be end of the line, making them very valuable to collectors.

I anticipate exclusivity either raising the prices are decreasing the amount of pieces in this line yearly (or both).  You’re in on the front of the investment.  The January price increase means that you can get torsos and masks at a steal right now…let me know if you want to reserve a piece.  I’ll be happy to send along pictures of what’s available.

Have you noticed?  Dreams do come true!

thought for the day:  The pot, the poem, the lesson – the universe speaks in forms that tell us of our own.  A vast theatre whose architecture, whose movement and sound, whose episodes have us billed in cosmic roles, speaking lines we cannot memorize for we know them for the first time consciously only when we utter them, developing character and destiny amid that scenery!  A symphony of soloist playing simultaneously in a composition the structure of which has been given by the composer, but the music of which, the individual sounds of which, are the choices of each performer.  Art creates images of that world that moves within the world.  And it is this realm which embodies itself continuously.  From day to day in our bodies….A person has the power to form the dust into a vessel.  The clay has the possibility only to be so formed.  It is this individual will in the person which can awaken to itself and which can be awakened to what its freedom is.  M. C. Richards Centering:  In Pottery, Poetry and the Person