Photo by the Amazing Katie Settel

If the great city I live in is going to the trouble of providing a decorated tree, and retail stores are filling their windows with special displays for passers-by, the least I can do is be a witness. So last week, I hit the train and made a quick tour of mid-Manhattan to visit Rockefeller Center and Bergdorf Goodman, whose windows are always spectacular. Their theme this year – Bergdorf “Goodness” – celebrates core values like love, harmony and equality. The value I’ve chosen for 2021 (thank you, BG) is HOPE, which was also one of theirs.

Hope on display at Bergdorf Goodman

Bergdorf’s rendition, in enormous 3-D letters that resembled jewels, was harder to make out than this wall-sized art piece painted on the side of a building owned by Knowlton Studios in Bridgeport, CT. But the proclamation is there for all to see. What I particularly like about the imagery is depicted in a detail photo in the Times that shows the observer reflected within the sentiment.

Choosing this word sent me to the dictionary. You’ve probably heard, as I have, that “hope is not a strategy.” So I wanted to be sure that the message I’d be regarding for the next 365 days would inspire me. Here’s what my American Heritage Dictionary has to say:

1. To wish for something with expectation of its fulfillment
2. To look forward to with confidence or expectation
3. To expect and desire

and further down the list, moving into the archaic meanings: The theological virtue defined as the desire and search for a future good, difficult but not impossible to attain with God’s help.

That’s when I knew it would be my word for 2021. Never have I needed divine guidance more than these days. Hope, it is.

I mentioned that I’d show you my updated studio space which reflects my HOPE for 2021. As a commitment to myself and an action step for the Universe, I invested in a better work area for my art. I wanted to stop using the floor for my design table, so cleared off a bookshelf unit and got new shelving and containers to make it easier to create. More to come, but here’s the before and after so far.

After

Before