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.

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.

Sometime over the past few days the gray, rainy skies conceded to the ushering in of Spring, daylight savings and the SUN. Yes, New York City is officially in paradise mode this week as people are shedding their winter gear and grumpy scowls. But do you know what that means for us? No, not just baseball season (but don’t tell my husband that) – but also outdoor market season! It has been almost eighteen weeks since we’ve last hit the pavement displaying our art and apparel. And now we’d like to formally announce that we will be making our jubilant return to the Union Square Market this coming Saturday!

Come join us at the Union Square Artists Market and have first dibs on our exciting full lineup of notecards and prints! We will have a bunch of shirts on hand as well as we know you guys want something new and hip to wear for the Spring season. Definitely sign up to my twitter account or facebook fan page for daily updates on market days as we know how unpredictable those clouds can be. We’ll see you guys, downtown.