ACH (Alternating Hemiplegia of Childhood) Foundation Fundraiser

Click to view and/or print flyer (pdf format) ahc-flyer

Alternating Hemiplegia of Childhood Foundation
invites you to:

The 3rd annual AHC (Alternating Hemiplegia of Childhood)
Spring Fling Silent Auction Dinner Dance

Saturday,
May 3,
2008 • 6:00pm

Hartford Hilton Hotel
315 Trumbull Street
Hartford,
CT 06103

Alternating Hemiplegia of Childhood (AHC) is a rare neurological disorder.
The disorder causes episodes of complete or partial paralysis of the body that can last for minutes,hours or
days. During episodes,brain damage can occur and cause temporary or permanent loss of cognitive and
physical abilities. Children with AHC often have associated symptoms such as lack of muscle tone, painful stiffening of the extremities, erratic eye movements, developmental delays, mental retardation and seizures.
The cause of AHC is/are unknown and there is no known cure for the disorder.
AHC is a degenerative disorder.

What Can I Do?

• Spread the word! Share this flyer with anyone and
everyone! Public awareness will help more children and
adults to be properly diagnosed.
• Attend the AHC Spring Fling on Saturday, May 3, 2008
at the Hartford Hilton.
• Make a donation! Make checks payable to the AHC Foundation,
or you may visit www.OSIBusinessServices.com/AHC to pay by
credit card.
• Ask more questions! Visit www.ahckids.org or visit
http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/afha/ and learn about the various issues affecting children and families with AHC.

Where Does the Money Go?

The AHC Foundation is a volunteer, non-profit organization that is managed by the parents of children with
AHC.
The AHC Foundation mission is to raise monies to fund research and raise awareness in both the medical and public communities. Our vision is to find a cure for AHC and to identify others who have been misdiagnosed.
For more info on upcoming events and news about
AHC, you may also visit
www.OSIBusinessServices.com/AHC .

If you have further questions or comments you may call
(860) 680-9410.

It’s Official! Taxes and Artists DO mix!

_________________________________

We are now up and running! So for all of you artists out there who are frustrated with not being able to locate a local accountant who is familiar with artists and how they need to run their businesses, your search is over! We will be offering long distance tax preparation via phone/fax/mail beginning with the next tax season in Jan. 2009 !! So save your receipts and breathe easy.

I will post again when we are ready to pre-schedule appointments for next year and have price scheduling available to email to you. But don’t forget ….you can always email anytime with questions and suggestions!

Have a great one….and BE great!

Truth Be Told

What is truth? This question may be rivaled in complexity only by “Why are we here?” Throughout time, humankind has sought out truth. Truth is at the root of our existence and some say the purpose of our existence. In order to understand the meaning of truth, we must first qualify the classification of the definition. The word, truth, itself carries different meanings across several planes. There are sometimes subtle and other times vast differences in the meaning of the word when discussing academic or historical truth, legal truth, self-evident truth, religious truth, or personal truth.

In all aspects, truth is based and built upon the academic definition of the word. The academic definition gives the following for the word truth: “the true or actual state of a matter; conformity with fact or reality” (Dictionary.com, 2006). This idea of conformity to fact is what gives meaning to the idea of historical or scientific truth. In these realms, truth is a fact that has been proven through accepted methods or has occurred historically. Truth, in this sense, is based on the past and what has already been and may bear no meaning on the future.

When considering the meaning of truth as it pertains to legality we must introduce a new aspect: reasonable doubt. In the legal world, truth is often defined as that which can be proven to be fact beyond a reasonable doubt. This means that we must only go so far in determining something to be true. What may not, in reality, be an accurate reflection of fact, can be deemed the truth in a court of law. We can see evidence of this in those who have been wrongfully convicted of crimes they did not commit. Their guilt was deemed as truth through evidence to a point “beyond reasonable doubt.”

Self-evident truth is a type that we don’t speak of very often, but our lives in the United States are based on it. The U.S. declared freedom with these words, “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness…” (Declaration of Independence, 1776). This idea that truth exists on its own accord and that certain facts are given the title of truth automatically is at the very core of freedom.

The idea of truth being self-evident may be drawn from religious truth. A truth that is based on faith and beliefs is difficult to argue. From the beginnings of our human existence, there have been religious leaders offering new versions of religious truth. Religious truth is the belief that truth is sent from a power beyond our comprehension and commands unwavering belief in that truth with faith, regardless of our ability to understand that truth. From the early teachings of Krishna to the modern Baha’i religion, the idea of religious truth remains the same.

Personal truth is born from and plays a part in all of the other kinds of truth. What this means is that we each have our own perspective, and so each have our own personal truths. What is true for me may not be truth for you. “The truth is always a compound of two half- truths, and you never reach it, because there is always something more to say.” (Tom Stoppard). For example: You are standing on one side of the street, while I am on the other. A car drives by. The side of that car facing me is painted black while the side that faces you is painted white. For each of us a different truth exists. For you, a white car has just driven by, while for me, a black one has. While neither of us is wrong in our perception of the truth, we each have our own different truth as it pertains to the same action. One of my favorite quotes on personal truth is, “Your whole life is nothing but a dream. You live in a fantasy where everything you know about yourself is only true for you. Your truth is not the truth for anyone else…” (Don Miguel Ruiz, 1999, p. 55).

As we can see, the definition of truth is not only dependent on the context it is taken from, but also on the perspective from which it is viewed, as well as on the context to which it will be applied. I suppose this means that there is no simple truth to be told.

(This essay was written as a class assignment….. I thought I would share it with you.)

A Time for Every Purpose…..

Don’t we all wish to have time for all that we wish to do? A time for every purpose? Especially those of us that answer to more than one or two callings.

Some of you may be aware that I am not only an artist, wife, and mother, but also a student. I am finishing up my Bachelor’s of Science degree in Accounting. (The nerd part of my “rebel nerd” designation). I am working full time at school right now which means four classes at a time and only 12 weeks to cram those full four classes in, instead of the usual semester.

If this were my only other distraction, I might yet be finding more fruitful time for musing. Alas, it is not. I am also studying for the Special Enrollment Exam* (to become an Enrolled Agent) and the start up of a tax and bookkeeping company with my brilliantly cool tax partner, Jackie Z. How does this relate to my art? One of the things I hope to offer through this business venture is an extension of my tax advice geared to artists. I hope to help fill a void in this industry. It is near impossible sometimes to find someone to help with taxes that understands artists and how their “businesses” operate. I am hoping to be able to offer long-distance tax services (due to popular demand) for artists across the country, most likely beginning with the next tax season -early 2009. I feel a need to not only help clarify tax codes and how they affect or do not affect artists, but to also offer direct one on one tax services and advice.

So…know that even though the art is at a temporary pause, my muse is wide awake and lots of new designs are being worked on while I prepare for an added chapter to my life as a “rebel nerd.” I will post updates on my progress towards this end as well as notification of when I am taking on new clients.

*From irs.gov: ” What is an enrolled agent? An enrolled agent is a tax professional, who has demonstrated special competence in tax matters, applied for enrollment, and has been issued an enrollment card.” “An enrolled agent is a person who has earned the privilege of practicing, that is, representing taxpayers, before the Internal Revenue Service. Enrolled agents, like attorneys and certified public accountants (CPAs), are unrestricted as to which taxpayers they can represent, what types of tax matters they can handle, and which IRS offices they can practice before.”

“Solitude”…a descriptive essay.

 

Solitude

~a descriptive essay by Lori Bouchard~

My favorite place to go is one where I am alone in physical being and thought. It is a place for me to get away from the crowded and chaotic doldrums of everyday life. It is a place where I can escape being a wife and a mother and a daughter and a friend. I am truly free to be myself there. It is a place where I can release my creative muse. This solitary place is my glass studio.

This studio can barely be called such since it is merely a small area in a large cold garage. It is a tiny corner surrounded by car parts, extra tires, and old cars in various states of rest. The smells of strong coffee and old motor oil mix with those of torched silver, glass fumes, and propane. The heater is high in the ceiling rafters and at the opposite end of this space, leaving my part of it chilly and feeling isolated. A large picture window and the glass door are my only connection to the outside world. The old, dusty vertical blinds allow me control over the amount of light as well as the level of outside intrusion into my time here. They give me the option of completely cutting off the outside world.

My old metal Craftsman workbench is the most prominent feature. Pushed against an old gray concrete wall, its top is cluttered in organized chaos. Rods of colored glass, in small piles to the right and others in glass jars like candy sticks along the back of the bench, beg to be made into something wonderful. Drawers down the right side hold colored glass chips, pure silver foil leafs, and strange looking tools which can be reached easily with one hand when at work. My torch is clamped to the top of the bench and seems almost as a brass beacon calling me to light it. When lit, the torch is quite loud, blocking out most of the noise from outside. The earphones from my MP3 player in my jeans’ pocket allows me further isolation through whatever type of music suits my creative mood- sometimes heavy metal, sometimes classical. . My torch is directly surrounded by various jars labeled “Bucket O Mud”, and a shiny steel bowl of muddy water and broken glass. An old rusty coffee can filled with kitty litter holds partially coated mandrels upright while they dry and looks like an old dead forest of steel.

My workbench is higher than a table and requires me to sit on a stool. Mine is an old black plastic covered stool like the ones you find in a small town garage. This stool swivels, but also rocks a bit as both the legs and the concrete floor beneath are uneven. This rickety throne acts like a pivot of action and gives me the agility to maneuver as necessary while pulling hot glass strings or reaching for a new cold rod. From this perch, I can easily reach both my rack of glass rods and my kiln.

The rack of glass rods sits behind me on a stack of old metal filing cabinets. Behind me, it remains convenient but not distracting. This rack was crudely, yet quite effectively, handmade for me by my husband. An old kitchen cabinet without a door holds twelve inch long pieces of PVC pipe all stacked together like a plastic honeycomb. Each pipe holds a different color or type of glass rod giving the rack a rainbow-like appearance. Old photos of beads that I have made hang at odd angles on the side of this cabinet acting as signposts to any who may peer through the glass door and wonder what occurs here.

To the left of my stool, in front of the large picture window, sits my kiln. It sits upon a work table that has been lovingly confiscated from my husband because its legs are easily adjustable. This particular kiln is made of layers that can be removed to change the size of the kiln. The most notable part of the kiln are the bright blue computer on the side, which allows for exacting temperatures and specific heating programs to be run, and the crude looking fabric flaps on the bottom layer. These now fraying flaps allow me to insert rods of freshly made hot glass beads with just one swivel of my stool. The heat from the kiln, combined with that of the torch, quickly heats up the tiny corner allowing me to feel even more at home within this creative bubble of space.

In my studio, I am comfortably segregated from the outside world. I am free to awaken my muse and release her. I can be alone with my thoughts, free to let my mind wander at its will. In this place, I answer only to myself, and have no obligations outside of the flame.

Media….does it matter?

No, I do not mean media as in television, newspapers, magazines, etc…

Instead I am referring to the raw materials in our art. The media of choice.
How important is our choice of media and our ability or inability to focus on just one?

Some art “experts”, and you know who you are, would tell us that we MUST pick one medium and stick with it. We MUST be steadfast, predictable, and focused in order to produce a body of work that is congruent and meaningful.

Blooey. What a bunch of hogwash eh?
I agree that we must become focused in our work and that we must be able to , at some point, produce a “body of work” that is cohesive and connected. Our expressions must tell a story and must make sense outside of our own minds. How we arrive at that place is where I disagree.

I think that if we limit ourselves to one or even two or three media only, then we are closing our creative selves into a little box where “Impossibilities” (remember those mythical creatures we talked about earlier?) are able to creep into our minds and bind our muses with limits and liabilities.
Rather, we should allow ourselves to create in as many media types as we need or desire. If we can do this, we can allow ourselves to honestly find the one or two where we feel the most comfortable, and can use those as a basis, a foundation, for our art. From that base, we can incorporate infinite forms and ideas to bring about our creative vision. We are limitless in our abilities and infinite in our artistic connections.

I have found that by incorporating many media and many forms into my work, I am able to more honestly express an artistic thought than if I were handicapped by one or two forms. You know how sometimes a word is easier to say in another language? This is the same. Some things are “easier to say”, or “better expressed” in a different language- or medium. By opening ourselves to new methods and materials we are learning a new language that can only allow us to expand our artistic vocabulary.

My foundations are chains and glass. From that I can expand to include sculpture in three different media, wire work, filigree, weaving, and more….. how boring would my work be if I only allowed myself to put a glass bead on a chain? Oh the horrors!

So…by all means, become finessed in one or two media, learn them inside and out, and master their manipulation. Then, free yourself into the endless world of creativity by learning a “word of the day” in a new “language’!

Have a great one….and BE great!

Until next time….
Lori B.

Believing the impossible. Impossibility is impossible.

I know….how can one believe if it’s impossible?  Artists do it all the time. With Faith.  Desire.  Need.  Creativity.
The character Jean Luc Picard from Star Trek The Next Generation once said, “Things are only impossible until they’re not.”
Very wise.
Consider this: If we are to take the things we label as “impossible” and dismiss them as such, we should likely still be living in caves and grunting like wild young mid-pubescent boys. Proving false the very idea of impossibility is the basis for our modern existence. Not too very long ago we all believed space travel to be realistically impossible, and yet..today…we know more about our galaxy and have sent probes further than we could have even imagined as impossible then.
How does this translate into art? Artists are among those who seem to be missing some genetic information that opens a window for us to the impossible. We are almost unable to comprehend the idea of “impossible”. Because of that….it is ALL possible. If it is ALL possible…we have no limitations and our minds, our ideas, our creative spirit is free to venture as far as it can with no restrictions or impositions of constraint.  We are not compelled to situate our work or our lives into a box of conformity and blind acceptance of the world, but rather live to question it. 

 Art is by definition new and groundbreaking.  (Otherwise it is nothing more than manufacture and industrial).  In order to create new and groundbreaking ideas, we must first believe that the ground can be broken.  We must NOT allow ourselves to be coralled by the “impossible”. 

Maybe sometimes, when we think to be in the midst of a “creative block” we are merely acquiescing to the idea of impossibility.  Maybe, if we are able to allow ourselves to yet again, dismiss that as itself impossible we can open up the floodgates of creativity once again.  Allow ourselves to unblock from the range of possible and move further and deeper.  (Besides, if it is popularly believed to be impossible, you certainly cannot get it “wrong” now can you? So GO FOR IT!)

Even the physical word itself sounds silly and inane. 

Hmmm… Impossibility is impossible.

The Art Show Booth…an art in itself…

Wow….let’s see….where to begin this week?  Maybe at the beginning….or in this case at the booth entrance!

I am in the very tedious and never-ending process of a “booth redo”.  I have decided to jump back in to the show circuit, but here in CT instead of in TX.  This means that I need an entirely new setup.

There are many things to take into consideration when deciding on a booth design….. not only the “style” of your products and business, but also what is  practical and appealing for the customers, as well as what is practical and easy to set up.   We also must be ready to setup in both indoor and outdoor events here in New England- while summer may be great for outdoor shows in a tent, the season is short and the winters can be brutal.

So….. I have decided that I want to bring the utmost in serenity and elegance to my booth.  Hmmm….in a white tent in a parking lot you say? lol…yup.  Quite a lofty goal isn’t it?  Well….so far it has been absolutely achievable with LOTS of research, LOTS of shopping, and a bit of ingenuity and creativity.

To set the mood:  I see white. Lots of white.  A blank canvas if you may.  A punch of color for drama. 

Picture this (Don’t worry…I will post actual pictures as soon as I take some):  A white tent with white walls.  White grids hanging on the walls.  Bright, sparkling silver jewelry hangs on soft grey velvet pads in near randomness on the grids.  Occassionally the scene is broken by a white shelf with a stunning piece on a bust.   Only one lone table graces the space. It is covered in a simple, yet elegant white cloth that peeks a bit of intense and romantic hand dyed rose red from beneath.   If you are lucky you will be greeted at the entrance with a large bouquet of fresh red roses that introduce you to the ambience of romantic peace.

Wow! I can only hope that my booth will evoke a touch of what I can describe.  I will let you be the judge.  Photos coming very soon……

The Fear of Success… is it in your way?

I know it’s in mine!  Yup. I admit it…a certain fear of success has been holding me back.

“Why would you be afraid of succeeding?” you ask…..

Well… it’s simple really.  I love to try new things.  I love to incorporate new things into old things thereby creating new ones.  This is not just true of my art, but of all areas of my life really.  I am always looking for another “new thing” that I don’t know how to do…yet.  
For instance, I am hoping to spend some time with my husband this fall and winter learning how to do some autobody work and welding.   Why?… Why not?  I don’t yet know how and think it would be really interesting to know how. (not to mention that we do own an extensive collection of antique cars that are in fairly desperate need of some body work! lol)
I also would like him to teach me how to install hardwood flooring and some sanding too (He’s a hardwood guy….anybody need a fabulous new floor installed in CT or MA? Call him…he’s the best! ~Shameless plug for Bouchard Wood Floors~)

So how does this fit in with my fear of success?  Well, from my own insights, I think that a part of me fears that if I become successful at something, then I will feel compelled (either by myself, my family, or society) to continue doing that thing that has become successful, and in doing so, will find myself unable to try even more new things while I plug along doing that one successful thing and quickly becoming bored doing it.  There is also the pressure to take that one successful thing and continually improve upon it to ensure it’s continued success.  Who needs that kind of pressure right? lol   Make sense?  Sound familiar?  Come on….be honest with yourself at least…you know it does.  We all face these kinds of fear in our daily lives.   At least with failure, we are in a familiar place. 

So ….as a “jack of all trades and a master of none”… I am going to continue battling that fear and forging on towards the financial success that duly matches my desire to create and try to envision the “place of success” as a “new thing to try” rather than a scary and intimidating place to be.  

See you there!
Till next time…
Lori B.

Be Beautiful….huh?

Be Beautiful.  Hmmm. I DO say that alot don’t I? So..what does that mean? Do I mean that you can just decide to be beautiful and so therefore will be??  Yep. Somethin’ like that.

While of course my “theory” is based on the assumption that we are all inherently beautiful because we are human beings, and of course that is true.  Admit it to yourself…it IS true!  If we ALL carried the exact same ideal of beauty, we would all be stalking the same two people on earth….which would be a bit mad don’t you think?  We each find different aspects, quirks, and features to be attractive.  We each have our own idea of what is beautiful in others.  Why can’t we accept all of the things that we are ourselves as beautiful? 

Now…why is it true? Ok.  Consider this: our society has a certain “image” that we consider to be beautiful.  Other societies have very different standards of beauty.  Ours is based on unrealistic, materialistic, commercial, and otherwise rediculous standards of what is beautiful.  The basic and simplified reason for this is: If companies use an unrealistic image of beauty to promote their product and thus create the belief in you that if you use that product you will be closer to attaining that station of “beautiful”, then they have created, just for YOU, a neverending cycle of purchasing power.  Meaning that YOU will continue to purchase their product in the hopes that you will reach the similarity to that image.  But of course you will NEVER reach it as it is completely UN-realistic remember?  And so, these incredibly outrageous standards of beauty MUST be maintained in order for the continuity of capitalism in Western society.  We are, I think, just at the cusp of beginning to change all of this, but there is such a long way to go still. 

So…if we remove our societal standards of beauty, what is left?  Well..you are not a goldfish, you are not a bumblebee, you are not a house plant (I hope), you are not a chicken…… you are a human being.  You are unique.  You are beautiful.  It is your flaws and quirks that make you YOU and as such are what make you beautiful.  The kind of beautiful that transcends societal standards, cultural ideals, and time. 

So…voila!… all you need to do is recognize that you are inherently beautiful and you will be deciding to be beautiful and therefore will be!