Recently, there has been quite a bit of controversy in New York City regarding Mayor Bloomberg’s and Adrian Benepe’s effort to limit artists from displaying and selling work near city parks. Well that definitely throws a big monkeywrench in our 2010 plans for Union Square. Check out this pretty neat letter written by my husband fighting this proposed change. You guys can get in on the action too! Email the silly Parks Commissioner and his attorney and tell them that they are greedy and lame for proposing such rules. If this bill passes, Ecopatterns will likely be done with Union Square for the forseeable future.

Nevertheless, this does not thwart our efforts to find better, and more legitimate venues to continue our fight to raise awareness for endangered animals. We spent the past week scouting out new spots to display our growing lineup of artwork and tees. We’d like to announce that this coming Sunday (April 11th), we will be debuting our work at the GreenFlea on Columbus Avenue & 77th Street (Upper West Side). Definitely swing by and check out our new digs and also have a first peek at our new Panthera Tigris shirts! Of course, this is an evaluation period for us and we are still figuring out whether this market gels with us. At least it’s closer to where we live, and the city can’t kick us out of there.

We are wrapping up yet another fierce week for Ecopatterns as we have expanded our lineup of Note Cards as we close out January and look ahead to the rest of the year’s plans.

We have been getting a lot of questions on our plan for 2010 and whether we’ll be setting up in the Union Square Market and we figured we’d address it here. 2009 was a banner year for us in the Artist’s Market in Union Square (NYC) and we achieved our fundamental purpose of establishing brand recognition and raising awareness of our endangered animal concerns. That is not to say that we are done with Union Square but our presence there in 2010 will be less noticeable for the foreseeable future. No way! We love being there. Our plan is to select certain weekends throughout the Spring, Summer and Fall to once again set up our display and meet all our new patrons and friends as well as some of our awesome group of repeat customers. We’ve also pegged the Columbus Avenue Green Flea on the Upper West Side as another venue that we will certainly explore. In all, we look to expand our reach as we cultivate our growth with our business.

For more information and alerts about when and where EcoPatterns will be making appearances in 2010 and beyond, sign up to our Facebook Fan Page or follow @Malathip on Twitter!