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 the 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.