happy birthday to me. this is a scan of an envelope that jackie did a few years ago. i can't remember if i have seen it in real life. it is part of the mail that jackie and i do for each other, but then we keep it. so, in honor of my birthday, i want each and every one of you to go out and buy me a present and then keep it.
i tried to crop that top image, the same way i cropped the bottom image, but i must not have hit the correct [save] button. anyhow, it's a lovely piece of art. after scribbling, she carefully cut out some of the spaces. jackie sent the scan a while back, and rather than post it that day, i thought i would post it on my birthday.
having penpals has been so much fun. i encourage you all to find penpals and exchange mail if you like to do envelopes. penals don't have to live far away. i had a penpal one time who lived only a few blocks from me and i sent a ton of mail to her just because it was fun to hear her reaction.
ok...back to work....
Happy Birthday, Jean.
ReplyDeleteIt is a wonderful thought that readers go out and purchase something in your honor...perhaps some pen or brush or pigment and make an envelope.
--k
p.s.
ReplyDeletebeautiful work jackie...as always
I am going to buy a parallel pen in honor of your birthday! Enjoy your day:)
ReplyDeletewow...i love that it is not even 8 am, cst, and i have people treating themselves to art supplies. and don't feel like you have to limit it to art supplies. if you need something for the kitchen, or if you are wearing clothes that you appropriated from your teenagers and they are now out of college....go buy some new clothes. (i'm talking to myself )
ReplyDeleteHappy Birthday, Jean!
ReplyDeleteIn honor of your birthday, I slept in for you this morning! I did drive to Des Moines with this envelope once, so you've held the actual one in your hands. I think we were trying to think of a way to display it for the St. Louis exhibit, though I finally just did a traditional frame, because at the time I was to shy for "um, excuse me, but Jean Wilson's letter will need its very own glass case and you will need to lay the back flap of the envelope flat so that both sides can be viewed. . ." I'm looking forward to seeing the artwork that your other penpals make with all the art supplies they're out buying for you today. *A Jean Wilson holiday* - it'll be our secret code for "I'm going shopping for something Jean doesn't have any more room to store at the duplex."
p.s.
ReplyDeletethank you katy
you know i love your artwork, too,
even though half the time
i don't know what your name is.
dear jackie...a snappy reply looms
ReplyDeletei hope people are reading this...to appreciate that we sometimes drive our mail to meetings with the other person so that we can watch the other person as they view the mail. we did that with the cut letter, didn't we?
ReplyDeletei wonder what people think when they read these things? i guess it just another example of art being a priority over pretty much everything else....
I guess people probably think we're crazy, but at least today everyone will have some art supplies. I've since had time to rehearse my response to the cut letter you designed for me, so sometime I'll be wanting to get together and do my current rendering of myself reading your letter. p.s. kathy: an almost unbeweave-able thing just happened. . .more later. . .
ReplyDelete¡Felíz Cumpleaños Jean!
ReplyDeleteHum, let's see... A gift to honor you. Well... No more art supplies. Actually, I'm waiting for the new set of markers I bought to dry out and write those cool neuland letters from your tutorials. OK. I got it! Since I'm a glutton, and you and I like 'alfajores', I'm going to by a box of that quintessential little American cakes: TWINKIES. I'll make sure to put candles on each. Salud Jean!!
ok i had to look up alfajor
ReplyDeletenow i am, dare i say it, lusting for the original and all the variants
jean, can you get them in des moines?
Happy Birthday Jean!
ReplyDeletehi...thank you everyone for the birthday wishes...and for gifting yourselves with art supplies. i think i tried making alfojores and i liked them. skip had eaten them in chile and he said mine were not like the store-bought ones, but they were good and reminded him of the ones he had. eduardo...remind me to tell you about the cake i made that was a big pile of twinkies and hohos..very cool cake...it was for a *tacky party*
ReplyDeleteI can't think of a single reason not to continue this birthday conversation - btw, did you bake that cake for Don Quixote, or did you just give him a pile of twinkies and hohos? Today, Jean, I believe I will go buy us some watercolor paper. Happy Birthday week!!
ReplyDeleteOkay, here I am, up at the crack of dawn because I want to get credit for this rhyme before anyone else thinks of it: Either you baked a cake for your brother, or you made him go on a Don Quixote Twinkie Hoho Spree. And now that I have that little couplet typed out, hopefully I can get some rest. Back to bed!
ReplyDeleteso...i said i'd bake him a cake on mar 22. i had to commission my mom to do the actual baking of the cake and yesterday we drove over and left some pieces at his house. we did not give him the whole cake...so maybe i still owe him a cake...but after years of being a bean pole, he is having to watch his intake, so it might be less kind to give somebody an entire cake. his wife is having a birthday in three weeks, i suppose we can make another cake for her :-)
ReplyDeleteHmm. I'm thinking your sister-in-law's birthday cake is going to be somewhat upstaged by a slightly bigger cake. . .but still I struggle with where to put the postage. . .
ReplyDeletelol... seriously, we need to get back to writing our off-off-off broadway production. in addition to the lovely envelope that each member of the audience gets, there will be cake. and NOT a cupcake. an authentic piece of cake.
ReplyDeleteno go water your mother's plants. (sorry, it's an inside joke, anyone who is following this conversation will have to buy a ticket to the o-o-o-b play...unless you follow this blog and then we'll comp you the ticket.
Okay, okay, I'll revise *The Library Letter* and start working on the sequel this summer. My parents are now officially responsible for their own dang potted plants. Absolutely no fake cakes. Spectacular looming light fixture malfunction joke. Hosiery issues strangely associated with computer crashes. We'll need a live fish somewhere in all of this, and there will be a very puzzling return-to-sender that none of us will recall having ever mailed in the first place. . .
ReplyDelete. . .special guest appearance by Don Quixote?
ReplyDelete...or...
ReplyDeleteDon The-Straight-Jacket
Don we now our frayed apparel...
ReplyDeleteAfter this comment, we only need one more to tie with the headbanging thread. So, now seems like as good a time as any to bring the current Jasper Fforde books into the mix: *One of Our Thursdays is Missing,* latest in the Eyre Affair series, and *Shades of Grey,* a whole new series about, you'll love this, a Colortocracy.
ReplyDeletejackie does one better than reading my mind. she sees into the future and knows what i will be wondering and then has an answer before the question was in my head.
ReplyDeletebut the thing i can't figure out is this...earlier today, i posted a comment about envelopes i had addressed to kathy and jackie. where is that comment?
I suspect our comments are developing minds of their own and have been wandering off to hang out with different sets of comments this whole time, though this might be the first time we've publicly acknowledged the phenomenon. Wow, Jean, you were up pretty late last night looking for that itinerant comment. Must be a good one.
ReplyDeletethe comment was this one (one that i make several times a day) oh great, that's what i need, more distractions. and then i mentioned the envelopes i had done in real ink, with nibs for kathy and jackie. my last wedding mailing is non-conformist and i started to worry that the po would not deliver them. so i am going to do a test mailing to you 2. i have stayed up late every night, trying to reset my clock so that i do not doze off during the 5 pm wedding. i have fallen asleep during so many events...and i really don't want to fall asleep at the wedding.
ReplyDeleteyou'll need a designated pincher with doberman tendencies
ReplyDeleteJust leave the distractions for later - you might like looking through all this when you are recuperating from the wedding. Looking forward to the test mailing:-) Don't lose your postal faith - the post office still loves you & they need your business! Oh, and the secret to staying up late is sleeping late in the morning, or grabbing an afternoon nap. You might want to toss your work ethic out the window for a couple of weeks. . .
ReplyDeletei just caught on to don quixote
ReplyDelete...duh....
there are probably several things that have flown over my head. but, i did manage to stay up until 11 and slept in until 7. yes, jackie, sleeping in is the trick. last week, i stayed up every night, but still woke up at 5, so by friday, i was a mess. but, i am cautiously optimistic that i can reset my clock.
ReplyDeleteluckily i have many other wedding jobs to keep me from obsessing over my own. today is map day. one map for chicago, one for a wedding in sonoma california. i'm tempted to put the sears tower on the ca map just for fun. but that would be mean. maybe i can put the pacific ocean on the west side of the chicago map, since i have lake michigan on the east coast of chicago. a take off on that wonderful saul steinberg map..
oh dear....another idea that i like, that has no, use except to amuse. maybe i was supposed to be a cartoonist??
Wow. 7am. What a slacker you've become, and now you want to be a maker of fictional maps and a cartoonist. What happens if you sleep until 10?
ReplyDelete11 pm...still at the studio
ReplyDeletemaybe i can sleep til 8
time to put this thread to bed...it has turned into a journal of my sleep... i'm counting on jackie and kathy to make some comments over the next three weeks. i'm down to the wire on the wedding projects. so far, they are looking. please let me know if the vertical business envelopes arrive. i posted them today..the 17th. we need to figure out how much extra time to give the p.o.
ReplyDeleteor, if i continue to do things like this, i might record them here. went to bed at 11 pm, put glasses on the floor, woke up at six. stepped on glasses, broke them into two pieces. was not thinking that i was going to get new glasses at this time. it's so hard choosing something that becomes a part of your face, that you have to look at every day for a few years.
ReplyDeleteWell, of course I had to check the old thread to see if anything interesting happened while I was away. Rectangular frames, rush order? Color??
ReplyDeletethere were some that were AMAZING. i hope they will let me take a picture of them. but, they were metal and i just can't make myself wear metal. i took an hour that i did not have to just stand there and whine. i chose some black plastic ones that look almost exactly like the old ones. i won't get them til fri or mon...in the mean time...i have some old ones on ..i can't see very well and they hurt my head...but, i guess it's not as bad as a number of other difficulties.
ReplyDelete