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.

Spring is in the air, around the corner. Well, I guess only in the air since there is still snow on the ground where I live.But that is not stopping us from looking forward to warmer temperatures and running around in Central Park. Speaking of my favorite place to unwind, word got around that several wild animals have been spotted in the park of late including coyotes, crazy little raccoons and owls.

I became recently fascinated by owls due to their distinctive behaviour and features and varied looks. Hey, they are cute! These handsome little birds became the inspiration for my latest little painting I completed last night, “Do You Think Spring is Here?“. What most folks don’t realize that many groups of owls are suffering critical declines in population. In Malaysia for example, a recent news story reported that owl poaching is on the rise – particularly for trade and for hunting purposes. A high level raid that exposed a wild-meat trend operation centering on owls fortunately raised awareness to such illegal practices. So our little hooting friends are in danger and we take note. Give a hoot.

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.

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!