As I move into this new year I am taking these words from the beautiful, brave, and late, Carrie Fisher:

“Take your broken heart, make it into art.”

I am shuffling back through my work and finding the artists. The young and the old ones. The hobbyist, the professionals, the sometimes-ers, and the every day-ers. I am looking for busy hands and colorful workspaces. I am looking for the light and the shapes and the shadows. I am finding ART and therefore hunting for the joy in everything I can. Because art keeps ME hopeful and searching – because I hope my art keeps YOU doing the same (and that your art will have the same affect!).

I am also looking towards the new year to see how I can make more art. The practice keeps me awake to the magic all around. I am doing something I have done pretty much every year, in one form or another since 2011-ish. I am shooting another 365 (if you are on instagram and would like to see search the hashtag #365_rectangles).  I had shared my project with a coworker earlier this week as we were out for an afternoon walk break. When I said, I am taking a photo a day with my Fuji Instax, he blinked at me and said, “But what if you run out of things to photograph?”

He was dead serious, and I honestly didn’t know how to answer him. Either that speaks to just how much I love and see my world through photography, or how deep in this daily practice I am… But honestly, how could there NOT be something to photograph every day? This is what I think Carrie was talking about. If we stop creating, we stop creating, we stop letting our vision and our voice be heard, seen, and pondered.

If 2016 broke your heart like it did to so many of us, I challenge you to  fill that wound with art. Fill it with photography, fill it with markers and pens and clay and ink and paint and color and fabric and metal. Pack that wound with something beautiful, with something that will make you and others think.

Fill it with heART.

Keep chasing that light (and that ART), Vanessa