My good friend and fellow artist, Burnell Yow! has, once more, updated my website. This time, I plan to learn how to keep it current myself. And I’m also planning on keeping this “first page” as a kind of  periodic personal journal.

Let me start by – if you don’t already know of them – introducing my children’s accomplishments. Carrie Rathmann, is Executive Director of a small non-profit here in Philly called Rebuilding Together Philadelphia. Her organization has been working to keep home owners “warm, safe, and dry” by going into communities and, with mostly volunteer labor, improving a number of homes, usually on one or two blocks. It’s quite an operation. If you want to learn more click on this link  www.rebuildingphilly.org .

Jake’s big current gig – for a third Christmas Season – is his Bucky Balls (and Bucky Cubes), but who knows what’s next?  For more information click on  Jakebronstein.com or  GetBuckyballs.com  .

Sophie continues to love her work at a community mental health center in Sharon Hill, where she’s been working for the last seventeen years.

To bring you entirely up-to-date, my November Show, At Home in the Neighborhood, did well at Twenty Two Gallery and raised around $3000 for the Greenfield School Art programs.   I opened my studio for Philadelphia Open Studio Tours (for the first time in four years), we opened our home for the Center City Residence House Tour, and there was a terrific article in the Inquirer which mentioned them all.  If you haven’t seen it, here is the link:  http://edbronstein.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/EdBronsteinInquirer11.11.pdf

Speaking of published works, here is a link to an article I wrote for CitySpace, a monthly feature in the Design Advocacy Group’s website:  Confessions of a Center City Booster

And now I’m hunkering down for another year of guiding six Thesis students at Drexel’s Department of Architecture and Interior Design, and of painting – and trying out some materials I haven’t used for a while – pastels, charcoal, and water-based media.  We’ll see how that goes.

All the Best to all for the Happiest of New Years,

Ed