Happy Holidays from Peggy & Michael

The holiday season is rapidly coming to a crescendo, with Hanukkah, Winter Solstice, Christmas, Kwanzaa, and of course, the Burning of the Clocks, all crowding into a two week period. But you might not realize that this is just the tip of the iceberg. There are many other ethnic and in some cases, archaic observances that fall precisely in this same window of time. Amaterasu, Beiwe, Brumalia, Chawmos, Deygān, Maidyarem, Dōngzhì, Goru, Hogmanay, Inti Raymi, Junkanoo (John Canoe), Karachun, Koleda, Lá an Dreoilín (Wren day), Lenaia, Lucia, Makara Sankranti, Maruaroa o Takurua, Grianstad an Gheimhridh, Mōdraniht, Mummer's Day, Rozhanitsa, Shab-e Chelleh, Sanghamitta, Saturnalia, Şewy Yelda, Sol Invictus, Soyal, We Tripantu, Zagmuk, Ziemassvētki, to name a few. Whatever festivities and celebrations you have engaged yourself in this season, we hope you are making the most of it, and whatever you do, don't hold back! Many of you who are getting this note have a full subscription to Outside the Lines and will be receiving your regular installment, with Peggy's Progress, a quick preview of the January interview, a link to something special we have found on the web this month, and more on Christmas morning. For those of you who are hanging out in the free list, there is still time to get a full subscription started before the Christmas morning issue. Just go to the Subscribe button below. (There is a small processing delay, so if you wait until Saturday night you might not get the Sunday delivery on time.) And of course, there is still time to get a subscription for a creative person who is special to you before Christmas. A subscription is a very economical gift that keeps on coming every week. We don't have a dedicated way to do gift subscriptions on the Amazon Payments system, but we can easily get around that, so send us an email if you're interested and we'll make it happen. Get your copy of The Element by Sir Ken Robinson We want you to have your own copy of The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything by Sir Ken Robinson. We love this book, and think it will be a great addition to your library. In fact, we want to buy you a copy. There's more information here. In the mean time, here are links to a couple of wonderful TED talks by Sir Ken in case you are not familiar with his work: Schools Kill Creativity, Feb 2006, Monterey CA Bring On the Learning Revolution! Feb 2010, Long Beach CA

contact us Have you got an idea for Outside the lines, or question for us? Drop us a line! Peggy Sonoda peggy@windhook.net Michael Reddell michael@windhook.net PO Box 160 Cambria, CA 93428 See our website for more information about us. Subscribe Subscribe to Outside the Lines to get our interviews delivered to your email box on the first Sunday each month, along with additional emailed articles during the course of the month. Subscribers also get full access to our Member Resource directory. There you will find all of our interviews, articles, and other resources that we provide to subscribers.  Copyright © 2011 Windhook®. All Rights Reserved.

This Week in Outside the Lines

Both of today's articles were inspired by a comment that Randy Stromsoe made in his interview last week. Here's a brief excerpt from what came up in today's installment. Finding Your Audience When we interviewed Randy Stromsoe for last week's installment of OTL, we wrapped up with a question that we ask every time we interview an artist. What would you tell somebody that's just breaking in and trying to make an art career happen? We always get interesting answers to that question, and what Randy had to say was no exception. "I think I'd find what show fits your work. It's easy to get excited if you have an arena where they like your work and you're a celebrity. If I just tried to make it in Cambria or San Luis Obispo, I would have been so frustrated. If I never took a chance and went to the East Coast then my life wouldn't have worked out. You have to find these arenas and so much of it is word of mouth by talking to other artists and looking at their brochures and what work they've pushed before... Some areas sell a lot of what we do. If I go back to Philadelphia to the Museum of Art's Craft Show I have more buyers than anywhere else. They also promoted me more than anywhere else. That show has been really good to me and the people who go to those shows have bought a lot." The natural inclination of most of us is to start small, start local, and build up and out from there. That intuition works for a florist shop or a jeweler or a service business like swimming pool service, dry cleaning, or auto repair. But art is a little different from most other businesses. An artist is working with a product that has very specialized and intangible appeal. There are regional differences in taste and interest, and the general public in most towns has little understanding of the pricing and value of art. Add to this the fact that many of us as artists choose to live where our environment is conducive to our creativity rather than where our natural market is. Windhook, for example, is on the central coast of California in one of the most amazing geographies and climates that we know of. We located here because the creative energy of the place works for us. But San Luis Obispo County is not a major art center. We do have several good art organizations here, and a higher than average concentration of good artists than many places of comparable size. But this does not equate to a local art market strong enough to support all those good artists. Of course this is not to suggest that you ignore your local market... In addition to the rest of the article quoted above, there was a second article in today's installment about the role that galleries and artist's representatives can play in solving the puzzle of finding your natural market. You can get to both of these articles and all the rest of our member resources when you activate your full subscription. We hope you will join us soon! Peggy & Michael  See our website for more information about us.  Copyright © 2011 Windhook®. All Rights Reserved.

Stepping Outside the Lines

Go to Outside the Lines now

At Windhook we are launching a new project that we want you to know about!

Outside the lines is Windhook's email journal about living the creative life. In the first issue each month, we feature an in-depth conversation with someone who's following their creative calling. We talk about the rewards and the challenges, the hurdles they've overcome, and that they still face. We talk to creative people in lots of disciplines with unique personal experiences. These conversations are a great learning tool, illustrating how unique, and also how common to us all the issues are. On the remaining Sundays, we send you articles about various issues common to living the creative life.

Here are just a few of the topics we cover:

• Making the leap from traditional job security to a freelance creative life
• Motivation and resistance—what makes you go and what holds you back
• Making time and space for your work
• Marketing and showing your work
• The business side of the creative life
• Creative ways to make ends meet
• Resources for creativity that we have found on the web and in the world

For starters, take a look at the October and November editions here. And if you subscribe right away you will get all the new postings starting with our interview with silversmith Randy Stromsoe on December 4. Or at least sign up for the free updates to follow our progress.