Good News

A few months ago, I wrote in this space:

“I am extremely grateful and surprised to have been offered a scholarship and a month-long residency at Vermont Studio Center, the largest international artists’ colony in the United States.  That I have been offered this gift and that I am actually in a place in my life to be able to accept it seems miraculous to me.  A couple more miracles will be required to actually make it happen, but then, what doesn’t require a miracle or two?”

Well, guess what? Miracles do happen!  I am very happy to report that I am the recipient of a Region 2 Arts Council Individual Artist Grant, and that this grant will make my residency at Vermont Studio Center possible. I’m a little slack-jawed with the wonder of it.

I have the voters of Minnesota to thank for passing the Clean Water & Legacy Amendment in 2008, which provides a tiny fraction of our sales tax to continuing our Minnesota tradition of beautiful, clean waterways and our legacies of art and culture as well.  So many fantastic artists and their work have benefited from this fund, me included, and I couldn’t be more proud and happy to live in a state that not only values the arts and artists, but puts its money where its mouth is in supporting them and us.

So now I come back to the questions I posed in that November post:

“With all excuses removed, how will I do?  Will I rise to the occasion, or will I find out that all the things that I thought were obstacles were not the obstacles? Now that I’ve gotten what I thought I wanted (or a piece of it anyway), will it be what I’ve imagined it to be?”

I tell myself again (and again and again):  Leap, and the net will appear.

Thanks, Minnesota.