Dreams Start Here...

Dreams Start Here ~ ATC

I couldn't stop thinking about the "Flood the Streets with Art" project. This Friday, Black Friday, artists around the world are making a piece of art to be left anywhere they wish it to be "found".  It is a gift to an anonymous recipient.

Everything about it captured my imagination...it was like a message in a bottle...mysterious, brimming with hope, anticipation to the extreme.  But, what to create...and where to "drop" it...that is where I let my Muse give me a nudge in the right direction.

 My local library, the Dillsburg Area Public Library, has an "adopt a shelf" programme under way. A small fee provides you with an engraved brass plate the Library places on a shelf for a year. You can have anything you wish on the plate, providing it fits within a set amount of characters.

My love of the Library and books goes back as far as I can remember. I was fortunate to have two very insightful parents who nurtured a love of learning in my brothers and me. My Mom and I would visit the Brooklyn Public Library every day, six days a week. It became a place of wonder for me...a place where the answer to anything and everything was possible if you were willing to discover it.

My brass plate is now on a shelf in the Junior Fiction section of the Library in Dillsburg. It is engraved with the words: "Dreams Start Here".  

The substrate for the  ATC is an old library card catalogue card. I altered it with Distress Inks, rubber stamped the word "Dreams",  and stencilled stars with metallic acrylic paint. I added pieces of hand coloured ephemera and handmade art paper...and finally the words "DREAMS START HERE".

I will be leaving this Artist Trading Card in a book on the shelf entitled The Dreamer by Pam Muñoz Ryan.  It is the story of a young boy who hears the call of his inner Muse and believes in himself enough to trust his vision.

I hope whoever find the card is inspired to dream…as big and as far as they can…and to let their own personal Muse lead them on a journey of discovery. And I hope that journey starts for them, as it did for me, at the local public Library.

For every thing there is a season…

I am a graduate of the York Academy of Arts, York Pennsylvania.

Although not a large school, it was rich with the devotion and determination artists bring to their work. We were fortunate enough to be taught by “working artists” who shared their passion with us and encouraged us to find our own way.

It is with great sadness that I learned today of the death of Ted Fitzkee.

Mr. Fitzkee was an extraordinary painter, artist, and educator. With humour he guided us through our drawing and painting courses. He brought the best out of each of us. He encouraged us to be true to what drove us to become artists. He stressed the importance of treating Art as a business, one that could feed our bodies and souls.

I will always remember him walking into our Studio at the Academy with a ladder and saying: “Hi. My name’s Mike. I hear you have a ceiling that needs to be painted.”

Thanks, Mr. Fitzkee…for sharing your warmth, humour, passion for the arts, and for helping to make me the artist, both visual and performing, I am today.