My American Heritage dictionary defines newsletter as a “printed report giving news or information of interest to a special group.” Well, you are a very special group, and I have lots of news, so here goes . . .

In this issue you will learn about the most exciting news in inkjet transfers - maybe ever - and about the future of the publications here at Cre8it. I know from email, that many of you are wondering what the heck is up around here - especially as it affects one of your favorite publications (which you have not seen in a year). So, now that I think I might have figured out what’s going on, I'll share this “news and information of interest”.

When I moved from San Franciso to Santa Fe some years back, everything I had ever known about gardening became a moot point. The two climates were so very different that nothing behaved as expected, and my life as a gardener became an exercise in trial and error. I planted everything, everywhere, and waited for results. Some things grew, others didn’t, some thrived, some died, and others became compost. When some became gigantic instead, and crowded out everything around them, they had to be pruned, or even allowed to lay dormant for awhile.

And that is a great metaphor for what’s been going on in my business for the past four years. The idea of a web business was as foreign to my previous experience as the high desert climate of Santa Fe was to the coastal fogs of San Francisco. Even though I had spent many years in graphic design and computer arts, I had left that for the gallery business just about when the web was born (in its present form). And though I had done marketing for twenty years, online marketing represented a whole new paradigm. I had to learn everything from scratch.

So I did what I had done with my garden. I “planted” all sorts of interesting new things and waited for them to grow. None died or became compost, I am happy to say, but many got pruned or given to neighbors. And some very big things that I had “sited” in entirely the wrong spot did not get the attention they needed, and began to waste away.

In this newsletter, I will tell you about what’s new in the “garden” of Cre8it.

Lots of artists have day jobs to produce the income they need to stay alive, and I am no exception - although I am lucky enough that my “day job” is all about art. I develop products, run a web business, do all my own webwork, publish a free newsletter (Whatever), publish A.muse.ings every two weeks, teach workshops, service wholesale acccounts, write and publish CDs, and process, pack, and ship orders. Whew!

The last issue of Now What? (shown at the right) translated to 88 pages in print form. That is more than most of the newstand magazines and it is all content - no advertising.

I produce, write, edit, and illustrate it alone. So it takes almost a month to produce an issue start to finish. This is not a project that fits easily into anyone’s spare time - especially someone who doesn't have any! So, it doesn’t happen.

Therefore, the future of NowWhat? boils down to a very simple choice: either it becomes part of my day job or it disappears. There are more than 6000 free subscribers to Now What? and I have gotten over a thousand letters about how much the magazine is loved and missed. So, perhaps it can survive as a quarterly magazine by subscription. This will at least tell me how much people really appreciate it.

What will it be like?
It will be the same wonderful publication you have been appreciating - full of projects with great step-by-step instructions, art school lesssons, digital art lessons, studio tours, artist profiles, etc. etc. While embracing the high quality look and feel of the best print magazines, Now What? has always been focused on multi-media artwork that is different, new, exciting, clean, and beautifully designed, and that will continue to be what makes it unique.