the ARt project- what is it?

For the past 18 months I have been given the great, great opportunity to work on a student project of my own vision, while pursuing my post-Bacc degree at the local university! The project is a result of recognizing that mobile app technology contains so much possibility to make the beauty and wonder in this world so much more accessible for so many more people. With this basic recognition and a lifetime of experiences in the arts, I hit on a combination of thoughts and discoveries that combined to light up my mind and inner vision to see the holistic possibilites of a new tool. Without going into too many other details, at this stage the project has enjoyed a proof-of-concept public launch at a local science and arts festival_ as of last year. As student-project director, I have also presented the prototype project to academic peer review at a regional digital technology in education conference, also last year. Now, as initial and generous university support funding to realize this stage of the project, and much more- winds down, I am building my first public funding campaign in support of the project. the ARt project has currently entered second-stage refinements in the university Engineering capstone group for the next 12 months. This means it is very important to fund what comes next! To do this, I will be learning by doing, how to apply for grants, search for private funders and play with crowd funding! To mark the launch of this brand new funding campaign project- I share the essential portion of an email that arrived in my inbox just yesterday, with this message:

When life just opens up, and we find ourselves spending time with people whose work we admire

I had a very lovely 15 minutes today. It was a lovely little window of timelessness in the quality of this day because I plunged in, giving myself permission to make contact with someone whose work I have been savoring and appreciating about a subject in art that we both share in our very individual ways.
I am not going to go into details about who this person is, as I do not have their permission to be detailed about them. I am not going to go into detail about the work we have in common because I don't want to brag.
I do very simply want to create witness to the quality of this small accomplishment that means so much to me today.
It all came about as I had written a letter to them over last week-end asking essentially if they would mentor a precious corner of my own academic work right now, knowing how in-demand their life and time is. Yet before sending that letter today, it just seemed appropriate to give a call to their place of business first, to ask if there might be a protocol for making this kind of inquiring contact out of the blue.
Rather than any stuffiness on their end, and I went through two administrative check points, what I received was a seamlessly saturated 15 minutes of on-the-spot mentoring and so much more, with someone who seemed was also having a good day. Someone who could receive my call at a moment on their end when everything just fell into place between us to share this passionate commonality_ and for a few unfettered moments, enjoy it in an extended conversation that touched on so many other details in very friendly repartee. It was 15 minutes that really has made my whole day, for at least the next 6 months!