It’s a First Friday. The first Friday of the month when I’m supposed to feature an artist. But as I’m writing this it’s 8:45 on Thursday night, and I’m already behind with no clue about what to do for my first post of the year. Did I procrastinate? Uhm… Maybe I put it off a little. “But I was having such a nice holiday,” she whined.

The first half was a whirlwind Manhattan day, then mostly Italian dinners and sitting in traffic, but the last half was sitting with friends, in movie theaters, over coffee, and having a lovely time taking a break.

So alas, I’m sitting here at the beginning of 2013 resolving to accomplish great things while I am falling behind (and yet hopefully giving off the appearance of being completely organized). I’m only four days in. Geesh. Good grief. Deep breath. Sigh…

Actually that’s my best resolution idea yet. Let’s all take a deep breath. No lofty unattainable goals. No distressing resolutions. Maybe just a deep breath and the willingness to give everyone, including myself, a break. A chance to begin anew (that includes you, too, Congress). A little change will do us all a little good, and that starts by taking a deep breath. Yes, Calvin, even you.

So here’s to you Bill Watterson, the creator of my favorite comic strip. My year begins with a big thank you to you as Calvin and Hobbes remind me to stretch, give a good tummy rub and breathe.

I met Greg Osterhaus when he was a graphic designer, painting part-time in his basement next to the washer and dryer, while he and his wife raised three kids. That was thirteen years ago. Since then some things have changed.

He paints full-time now, and his work is in both corporate and private collections. He paints gorgeous, oil-based landscapes with brush strokes that capture the scenery, the grasses and even the wind so they feel like they’re moving on the canvas. He has found a niche painting incredibly soulful portraits of cows that make viewers long to own his pieces (and consider cattle as pets).

Many artists wait for the muse goddess to strike, but Greg is the first artist I’ve met who strictly schedules two to four solo exhibitions per year. Yet what seems to inspire him most is simply his own curiosity.

“For me, painting is about much more than the obvious subject matter. It is also an essay in color, in composition, a comparison of light versus dark, grays versus hues, soft and hard, yin and yang, this and that. So there’s always another corner to turn. It is my hope that this something extra will be enough to keep the eye and mind engaged for years to come.”

The result? Canvases that he hopes will keep the eye engaged, no matter how often they’re viewed, and regardless of the fact they still come from his studio in the basement next to the wash, fluff and fold.

To view more of his works, visit Osterhaus Art.

I first met Niki over ten years ago while we were both at a small agency in Southwest Virginia. A designer and production artist, I recall her being two things: funny and curious. Ten years later, she’s not just a designer, but has also taught herself to become a programmer, and so she has shown me a fine example of someone who built a new life for herself.

She is about to begin a new job with a major corporation in their IT development department, and she has her own freelance web programming company, Design Geek{ess}. Although she developed herself in new ways, some things haven’t changed.

We have worked together on several projects, and those two traits I originally saw in Niki are better than ever. Her curiosity drove her to learn new skills, and it has allowed her to reach out for more information–either to online chat groups, other programmers, clients, or online resources–when the work requires it.

Her sense of humor, evident in any conversation, makes her really accessible and small hiccups in projects easily overcome. She is the first to admit she’s a total geek, and she plays with jquery, analytics, new plug-ins and widgets like a kid with a new puppy.

As the lead programmer on my new project, 224Pages, Niki quite frankly steals the show. The design might be mine, but it’s the magic of her programming that allows the site to read like a book.

Below is an image of Niki’s own site, self-programmed of course. Her “What?” section contains a portfolio of her great websites.

My First Fridays feature is not about a typical artist. She’s not a designer,  yet she creates. She’s not an author,  yet she writes. What she produces, people generally never see, but without it the art wouldn’t be functional. She is Christina Reeser, web developer extraordinaire and owner of io studio.

When Christina speaks about programming and development she sounds like an artist. She’s modest, curious and insightful. She explains widgets, CMS, style sheets and scripting with the enthusiasm of a painter describing the sunset. If she has to modify a dimension, move an element or create a chart it always makes the website look and perform better.

She once told me that programmers are like chefs who “each cook a little differently in their own kitchen.” But when I’ve worked with other developers (some of whom Christina has gladly helped out) and they see her code, they often say, “Wow. I want to swipe this!”

Over 350 websites contain her “DNA,” as she calls it. As a designer craving sites that look like print, Christina is the perfect programmer to help prepare my pages. For just as her tagline says, Christina is where functionality meets form. {Beautifully}

When you visit Christina’s io studio website, I urge you to disregard the design. Instead, go under your browser’s pull-down menu “tools” and look for the site source. There, you’ll find <title>Io Studio, Inc</title> and a full site built in just 29 lines of {beautiful} jquery.