By this same time last year I was fully busy preparing for Surtex 2012. It was a really exhausting time but it was worth all the preparation and the time spent. I registered for exhibiting with just one month to get ready and I DID IT!! You can read all related posts here: Post One, Surtex Part 1, Surtex Part Two, Surtex Part Three, Part Four: The Lessons Learned. This year it a very different one, I will be there in another way. The truth is I didn’t do my homework as Tara Reed taught me in her fabulous PDF courses, I didn’t send any follow ups. OMG! Yes OMG…but…A few months after exhibiting in Surtex I received a call from a licensing agency and an email from another one later. I was very exited but afraid to decide which one was the right one. After a few conversations with both agencies and some advised from good friends working on this business I had my decision. So….I will be represented by the fabulous Elise Rosenthal from Rosenthal Represents. I have been working with her and she is a delight to work with. She has advised me a lot…after all she has been in this licensing business for twenty years. This means that my main purpose for exhibiting last year WAS ACCOMPLISHED!!. Yes, that was my main purpose..I was looking for representation and I got it.

If you are decided to be in the licensing business, Surtex is the place to start showing up. You can start walking the show, as I did in 2011 and then learn all you can with the experts. Tara Reed’s blog is a must to visit. My favorite advise…enjoy the process…. after all we must enjoy the ride in this amazing life!

with LoVe,

I did have some great time during Christmas with my family. Also, I was(am) managing my son’s new diagnosed Diabetes 2 or 1? We still don’t know. He is managing it very well, way better than his mom. I am still a bit overwhelmed with this knowing that we had a hard time during 2000 with a autoimmune illness who took us to John’s Hopkins Hospital for a month as an out patient (the insurance company sent the approval for hospitalization a month after the doctor asked for it). In fact we were back in Puerto Rico when the approval arrived.

I took a 12 day vacation time to visit my son and family in Pennsylvania. We celebrated my grandson’s fourth birthday. I made the Batman capes and they were very well received by his friends. Each one had the child’s name in it. I feel so grateful to have the opportunity to be there and help them with some details. Again I met with artists friends who live in PA, Colleen Attara, April Heather and Stephanie Ryan. We had a great time, it was a delicious dinner and a better company. There I learned Joy Hall Molina also lives in PA and I hope we can meet in my next visit.

I am working on art for licensing and the great news is that I am signing the contract with a Licensing Agency…Woohooo..I am finally represented. I’ll tell you the name of the company as soon as the contract is signed by both parties.

Here are a few mixed media art for you to enjoy; the first one is called “Rejoice with the Miracle of Life” and the second “Lets sing to a New Day”. I’ll be selling prints and tiles starting tomorrow at the etsy shop HERE!

I’ll be adding more art during the week!!

Have a great week!!

And yes, I am still Enjoying the Ride Are you??

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Her Story..in her own words

Here is a story about a mom. My mom. My best friend in the whole wide world. When I was a kid, she did the normal mom things, like cooking dinner and making us brush our teeth, but she also did other things. She taught me to grow vegetables in the garden, and how to cut the asparagus when it was ready. I still see her squatting down with that old steak knife, surveying the asparagus stalks. She taught me that in order to eat a healthy meal, there needed to be a lot of color on your plate. She also taught me to have a lot of color in my life! She showed me how to live openly, be yourself, and that home was your safe place. She also taught me to break the rules sometimes, and just have fun. I remember one day in middle school, she checked me out of school, and told me we were taking a road trip to the beach. We stopped for a dozen glazed doughnuts and then headed for a distant beach in our old ratty convertible car. It was one of the best days of my life.

Fast forward a few years. I’m out of college and my mom and I are still very close. We speak on the phone every day, even though she lives in a different city. My then-boyfriend (soon to be husband) and I decided to move to Charleston, SC, and 6 months later, my mom also moved to Charleston. While I was worried about the close proximity, it turned out to be one of the best things that had ever happened.

My mother had done a lot of oil painting when I was younger, but it had been so long since she had picked up a brush. I had the thought to get her a gift for Christmas – real painting lessons. When I told her about it, she paused, and said, “you know, I think I’d rather take a pottery class”. And then I paused, and said, “Wow, that sounds cool, can I take it with you???” And that it was it!! We never looked back. Our pottery class turned out to be not so great, on the teaching side of things, but it was enough to get us hooked on clay. It wasn’t long before we purchased a wheel, then two wheels, and then a kiln and a slab-roller. Oh man, we were in business!!! It didn’t matter how cold or how hot it was, or how many mosquitos bit us while we were throwing (since our “studio” was in an unheated building outside) we made pots. And we made more pots. We made pots until we were overflowing with pottery, and then it was time to sell. We started doing retail shows together all the time. We traveled to different states, stayed in a variety of hotels, doing lots of good and bad shows. Each one is a precious, precious memory.

Then, all of a sudden, things changed. We were driving to a show in Florida in early 2008, and my mom got confused on the road. She didn’t know how to drive, or how to handle the fork in the road. I knew then, that something was very, very wrong. Not long after that, she was diagnosed with cancer. Stage 4, in the lungs and in the brain. The tumors, all 40+ of them, are what caused her to forget how to drive that day. I was 5 months pregnant with my first daughter.

10 months later, my mom passed away. I had a 5 month old baby, and I struggled each day. I went through the blackest time in my life. When I should have been celebrating life, I was struggling with death and depression. I stopped doing anything creative whatsoever, and just tried to make it through each day.

When I ever so slowly began to come out of my fog, I knew that I was almost ready to go back to the studio. I also knew that my pottery work was going to change dramatically. Hugely. Finally, the day came when I was ready to try it. I sat down at my work table and let my hands just sort of play. And birds came out! This was good; it felt right. I kept making birds, and then I realized how I could manipulate them to show emotion and concept, and I could use birds to express everything that had happened in my heart.

I never went back to my wheel. I still have my wheel though, and I will use it when friends want to play, or if my daughters want to try it. But I am done throwing. It doesn’t suit my patience anymore. It feels better to slap, squeeze, and squish the clay into forms that I want. I work intuitively sometimes, other times I have a sketch I use.

I started making bird sculptures, and I felt a tiny release each time. Sometimes I cried while I worked, and other times it made my heart happy, but it was what I needed. All of it. So I started focusing on my sculpture alone.

Letting go of all the functional pottery I had made in the past. It was done.

That was 4 years ago. I’m still loving my sculpture process, and my birds. I am excited each time I get to go to my studio and be with them. So now, looking back on that time in my life, it’s no exaggeration to say that it was THE life-changer of my life. All I once, I became an orphan, a mother, and a sculptor.

Thank you for reading my story.

Kelly

I’m so proud to share some of her stunning work:

Hanging Soul

Lift

Balance

Artist Statement:
My narrative sculptures are an expression of the deep sorrow, delirious joy and tumult I’ve experienced thus far in my life. Flight, by all its definitions, connotations, and implications is a flying away from; a rising to; an escape and a release; an expression of desperation and joy. Emotions beat inside me on wings on anguish and fear, but also on wings of happiness and love. I am hopefully able to release all that I carry inside me, bird by bird, one small release at a time.

About Kelly Thiel (Her Bio):

Kelly found clay in 1999. Interested in all things creative, she grew up with an artistic mother on a small farm in rural Georgia, where she developed her love of playing in the mud. Those formative years influenced her greatly, and since then, she has always been involved in the arts.

Kelly is married with two young daughters, who have already attended many art shows and exhibits in their short lives. Information: Phone: 843.437.4914 www.kellythielstudio.com kelly@kellythielstudio.com

I am sure that you adored meeting Kelly Thiel. You can follow her and her stunning work at www.kellythielstudio.com.

Stay tuned for more amazing stories in the next weeks.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving Day and Enjoy the rest of the week!!

With LoVe,

Hi everyone,

First of all don’t forget to participate on the spectacular Giveaway on this blog. You will find interesting gifts that you could win. This is the last week to enter. You can find it going back two posts back.

In these difficult times I am trying to focus on the “little things” that are really not that little. I am practicing GRATITUDE every day and Self Love. I am trying hard after last Sunday I was feeling I couldn’t walk..for real. I consider myself a strong woman and even that I focus on “bouncing back” the negative situations, there are times when I feel very vulnerable. The most important thing is not that we fall is that we can get up and fight again. I decided I have to stay focus with a stronger faith. I have been nurturing myself with friends, positive readings, praying time, inspirational quotes and lots of art.
Today I am sharing this new art. It is a mixed media made out of one of my experimentation with color at Collage Journeys in Vermont with the amazing teacher/artist Jane Davies. The name: Love is Always Present. Do you like it??

And here are a few quotes I am leaning on these days:

Nobody trips over mountains. It is the small pebble that causes you to stumble. Pass all the pebbles in your path and you will find you have crossed the mountain. ~Author Unknown

When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on. ~Franklin D. Roosevelt

Fall seven times, stand up eight. ~Japanese Proverb

Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did. ~Newt Gingrich

The race is not always to the swift, but to those who keep on running. ~Author unknown, in reference to Ecclesiastes 9:11, “I returned, and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all.”

Perseverance is not a long race; it is many short races one after another. ~Walter Elliott, The Spiritual Life

The great majority of men are bundles of beginnings. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

If we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep on walking. ~Buddhist Saying

Life is not about how fast you run or how high you climb but how well you bounce. ~Vivian Komori

You learn you can do your best even when it’s hard, even when you’re tired and maybe hurting a little bit. It feels good to show some courage. ~Joe Namath

Keep on going, and the chances are that you will stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I never heard of anyone ever stumbling on something sitting down. ~Charles F. Kettering

Never think that God’s delays are God’s denials. Hold on; hold fast; hold out. Patience is genius. ~Georges-Louis Leclerc

Problems are not stop signs, they are guidelines. ~Robert Schuller

Sometimes you must cross a bridge and other times you need to burn it. But, always keep building one and never lose your faith in life. ~Dodinsky,

Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over. ~F. Scott Fitzgerald

With ordinary talent and extraordinary perseverance, all things are attainable. ~Thomas Foxwell Buxton

In the middle of my BIG Mountain (a.k.a difficult situation) I am making more art and enjoying my little bundles of joy and energy, Javier and Aliany. They make my life happier, brighter and worth living. So grateful for this blessing.

Wishing you tons of laughter, health and love!!

With LoVe,