As the temperatures clocked in at around 70 degrees, it signalled the return of outdoor market selling. Yay! Ecopatterns was back in full force in Union Square for the entire past weekend. Returning to the scene of where we made our public mark a year ago felt almost like the first day of school all over again. Yes, butterflies were there, but pretty soon the familiarity took over and we were back to business. We met some our long-time friends and collegues, and I think this is a great opportunity to introduce and share their works with our viewers. Definitely check out : Kristiana Parn, Michael Murray (yeah, that’s him making fun of me in the photo), Michelle Han, Victor Spinelli, Edie Piijpers, and Kenny Kudulis. They are all fantastic talents and we are honored to be working alongside them all as they inspire and encourage us to keep going.

With the smell of spring, art and commerce in the air, we started sketching out our approach to this year’s outdoor artist market plans. We had lots of questions like – how often will we be in Union Square this year? Are we going to try other venues? What will be our new release schedule like? While our short-term plans are not quite fully worked out, we’d like to share at least what we are thinking at the moment. First off, I’d like to happily introduce the ecopatterns twitter account. Until today, I was directing followers to my personal twitter account and recently realized that not everyone will want to hear about non-ecopatterns updates. That said, the new dedicated account will be used for up to date announcements and deals that will co-exist with our awesome facebook fan page. Because we deal with unpredictable weather as well as changing consumer trends, we are going to use social media more and more to give everyone a weekly peek into our calendar and schedule as we attempt a slew of different venues along besides our comfort zone, Union Square. Thats more like it, right? So keep an eye out on our updates and tweets, and you’ll always know what we’re up to.

Sometimes, a change in surroundings is needed. Over the past year, most of our success and headway was made in Manhattan (particularly in the Union Square Artist’s Market) as well as ongoing interactions and collaborations with artists from Brooklyn despite being temporarily headquartered in Queens. After much thought and planning, Ecopatterns decided that change was a concept we’d dive back into.

This week, we packed our boxes and moved back to our old digs on the Upper West Side of Manhattan (where we originally set up shop for our first year in business). We couldn’t be happier. Not only is this move exciting for us personally, but we feel that it would benefit us professionally as well. See, we see a lot of promise for the Upper West Side artistic community. We know there are a lot of cool, hip folks here that would be open to talk shop and share ideas. Stressing the importance of community is key especially to the development and nurturing of artists and their businesses. While we are doing everything we can in the online circuit (with places like Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, Etsy, etc.) we can’t forget the local, physical aspect of networking. Hey, we can’t let Brooklyn get all the press.

That said, we’d like to give a shout to all of our artist neighbors. We want to hear from you in hopes of getting a dialogue or movement going. What do you work on? Where do you market your work? What are your artistic goals?

Photo credit: Jamie – “From Me To You” Photo Blog <-- please check out her site. it's awesome. also, check out her stunning Upper West Side FREE iPhone Wallpapers set.