With the holiday madness behind us, time to return to the business of day-to-day life. I have a pile of work waiting at the studio and the residual mess from the Christmas season must be sorted through and cleaned out.

Our first year at The Jacksonville Center has been both an artistic and financial success. We exceeded the modest goals set when we opened out doors a year ago and head into 2005 with more ambitious goals for growth.

City-bound skeptics predicted failure when we abandoned our urban lifestyle for a country-based photography and video studio with a side business providing fine art prints for other area photographers and artists. Southwestern Virginia, they said, simply did not have the base for a thriving business.

They were wrong and Blue Ridge Creative has carved out its own niche among the thriving visual arts community in and around Floyd County. As we continue to settle into out new home five miles north of Floyd we ask ourselves why, oh why, didn’t we do this about five years ago.

But who has time to look back? The future looks so much brighter.