Hello all, Rich here – taking the reigns of blogging duties and all things web from my wife so she can get some long needed rest and relaxation. In the midst of this rest, she is still sketching out new ideas and working on new paintings so we’re not expecting any significant down period. We are going through a pretty challenging chapter of our lives but we are not allowing this to stunt the development and growth of our business. And as she said, I’m picking up where she’s leaving off for the time being. It is our responsibility to our loyal customers, friends and most importantly to our overall mission.

With the birth of Ecopatterns, we took on the responsibility of utilizing art and social media to raise and spread awareness about animals most folks won’t know are endangered, and to back it up with factual information. This may seem like a modest responsibility to shoulder, but we feel it is critical for the future of the planet. We feel it would be particularly sad if elephants, giraffes and even little monkeys are spoken of in the same vein as dinosaurs a few generations from now. We have an opportunity to prevent this from happening especially if the threats are coming from things we have the power to control. So I wanted to extend a big thanks to everyone who has supported our mission thus far and those that continually encourage and help us spread the good word. Without you guys, we’d accomplish so little, and for that we are incredibly grateful. We look forward to keeping up the fight.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about the Red Panda otherwise known in some places as the original Fire Fox. Of course, I did not want to neglect actual foxes knowing that some of them are endangered as well. The Island Fox is one of them. On one island for example (Santa Rosa) there are under 14 Island Foxes left. 14?? There are more people in my 4-story brownstone where I live. This makes me sad and inspired my newest foxy painting, “Our Morning Ritual” – dedicated to all endangered foxes across the globe – including the most critically endangered Island Fox.

Another thing I wanted to say to everyone: I’m sure some of you have noticed that we’ve been available for outdoor markets less and less over the course of 2010. I just want to give my wonderful friends and supporters a quick note as to what’s going on. Lately, I’ve had to endure quite a bit medically – and have had repeated visits, tests and required rest prescribed by those monitoring me. Please rest assured that there is nothing uber-serious going on, and that everything will be ok. I am still working on new pieces and the business as we know it, is still moving forward. However, it is certainly affecting how often I can make appearances in outdoor markets and other venues. As always, please keep an eye on our twitter and facebook accounts for updates on when/where exactly we’re going to be setting up as we do have some venues lined up at the end of this summer and fall. In the meantime, my husband will be taking over most of the blog duties (on top of his web duties) as well as shipping mail orders from our online store for the next several months and he will keep you guys posted. I’m sure he’ll do a great job – so give him a chance to win you over. Thank you for your continued love, support and appreciation.

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.