November 1, Art Every Day Month, Yearning Opens the Path, by Tammy Vitale.

Many thanks to the amazing (and recently wed) Leah Piken who hosts Art Every Day Month in November.  It was through Leah that I met so many wonderful new friends – participants in last year’s Art Every Day who I got to know over the past year.  Thanks, Leah!

My own rules for Art Every Day Month are that clay doesn’t count.  I used Art Every Day last year to open some creative doors for myself, and found painting again. 

Sacred, if you’ve read my past two posts, is the name of the new line I am launching in January 2008.  It will focus on my torsos and masks and will be limited to a maximum of 200 pieces per year (150 torsos, 50 masks).  I am dropping my other lines for now, to concentrate on marketing Sacred, wholesale to shops and individually at events.  You can imagine that this changes much of my focus of production, production, production.  The limited pieces open breathing spaces and I’m using those spaces to meet new people and learn new skills both as a business person and as a human be-ing.

It seems appropriate to post Yearning Opens the Path as my first piece of the month.   Actually, I woke with this in my head this morning, a gift of twilight sleep and trying to focus on visioning the chakra colors.  The visioning was spotty but I finally made it through and along came this.  And I even remembered it without writing it down!

I didn’t remember until I came down stairs and started thinking about posting that today is the first day of November.  My initial plan was to try to rearrange my schedule to begin once again to include journaling in the first spurt of morning energy.  So instead, remembering Art Every Day Month, I directed the energy toward creating my daily piece.  This is the 2nd of 2 pieces, actually.  Sometimes (most of the time for me and water colors) it takes an easing into the medium because I don’t know it well and everything is always a surprise – so different from clay, which I do know well, and where everything is still always  a surprise.

I’ll be posting new clay work during the month, along with Art Every Day Pieces.  I am gifting myself with November as a "rearrangement" month – a month where I can break some of my old time habits and build new ones (it takes at least 30 days to create a new habit).  I want to free psychic time and clock time to explore the possibilities of this new direction in my art – to watch the changes that are happening inside me as I take this new Sacred and scary step.  I want to thank everyone who has been following along (and welcome all who join in) and leaving such encouraging comments.  I am not sure I could do it without you.

thought for the day:   Never compromise a dream.  Do what you must.  The fears, beasts, and mountains before you are part of the plan; stepping-stones to a promised land; to a time and place that is so much closer than you even suspect.  don’t let your eyes deceive, for even as you read these words, your ship swiftly approaches.  Mike Dooley, Notes from the Universe:  New Perspectives From an Old Friend