Anita, a friend of mine recently handed me a page torn from a magazine with an intriguing short article about a woman who decorates envelopes and sends them to people….perfect uptick in my spirit! The author of the article offered to send an envelope to anyone who contacted her. I couldn’t make it to my tablet quick enough to send out an email to Mary. I told her just a bit about myself, pointed her to my website and respectfully requested one of her envelopes. Her email response was quick stating that she wasn’t really an artist, she mainly used other people’s art but her main creative expression, if she had one, was in writing stories. She promised to send me an envelope! I was delighted by the idea but within a few days of preoccupation with my own envelopes in the studio, Mary’s envelopes slipped into the background of my mind swirling around with dozens maybe hundreds, maybe thousands of other ideas. Within a few more days they vanished into one of the deep holes up there where I think and dream and obsess. TODAY MARY’S ENVELOPE ARRIVED!! I did a little happy dance down the driveway from the mailbox to my front door with the envelope turning over and over in my hands. Mary made the back side of the envelope with the flap become the address side. It has an Ellsworth Kelly stamp cancelled in the upper right corner, and her address in the upper left. What a creative idea? That left the front side, where one usually writes the name and address, for her artistic expression, a smooth surface with no flap to interfere with her lovely miniature painting I’m a book lover and a bird lover and somewhat of a bird brain…..so the imagery is perfect for me….well surely the colorful birds symbolize “fights of fancy.” I clain that characteristic for myself also. If it is based on someone else’s artwork, I don’t recognize it as such. Inside she tucked one of her stories, a one-and-one/third page-long single-spaced sentence! Faulkneresque? She is indeed a writer. I treasure the envelope. Thank you Mary! I’m attaching a picture below.
