"INSPIRED BY THE BEST" I know. I know. And as an artist, not a writer, it feels frustrating to spend hours staring at a blank screen waiting for inspiration to strike when you could be in your studio doing what you love. It’s all about efficiency; you have to have a plan. A plan will ensure you write fully yet concisely and will help eliminate writer’s block. So let’s get going! Looking past the obvious, close observation and engagement of the subject is my process. The challenge is to see beyond the distraction of the conspicuous to capture its unique self. Some of my subjects are quite beautiful, others less so. My goal is to inspire those who see my work to look more carefully at the world around them, to discover beauty in unusual places. Celebrate the human, the marks people make on the world. Treasure the local, the small-scale, the eccentric, the ordinary: whatever is made out of caring. Respect what people have built for themselves. Find the beauty in some battered old porch or cluttered, human-scale storefront, while it still stands. My work is an examination of the different forms this shield takes, and the thinking that lies behind it. I use domestic objects as the common denominators of our personal environment. Altering them is a way of questioning the attitudes, fears and unwritten rules which have formed that environment and our behavior within it. AISHWARYA MISHRA