May 30, 2025
Deeply Seen and Known
Anne Is
Anne is a mold and deckle
made from wood scraps and screen,
a round of art at her kitchen table,
a dollar-a-pound bag of ragman finds
ready to become
book covers for hand-bound pages penned by hand
with Kathryn Gibbs exactitude
3.5 x 4.75″; acrylic, ink, watercolor pencil, and oil pastel on card stock
collaged scraps
2025
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Notes about poem and art: Two weeks ago friend Anne sends me another envelope of treasure by mail, this one containing a square of thin textured gold-on-one-side-silver-on-the-other foil; a 3×4″ snippet of hand-pressed paper embedded with bits of dried leaves; a small portion of a purple plastic mesh sleeve of some sort, now open along two edges; and a short poem computer-printed onto slightly stained paper trimmed right up to the edges of the 36 words it displays.
The poem is a “Dotty is” poem and arrives on my birthday, but I don’t think it was sent for my birthday. Nonetheless, it celebrates me royally. The poem makes me feel deeply seen and known, and the contents of this envelope celebrate strands of Anne’s and my friendship with finesse.
I haven’t talked with her yet to exclaim and ask questions, but here is what I think. I think Anne is continuing a process of sifting slowly through and sharing “stuff” that’s accumulated over time, fodder amassed through the years as a consequence of her being an irrepressible creative. I think the poem she sent, that had me absolutely agog at its specificity of detail tapping back 30 years or more, is so very Dotty-specific and so fully who I am because … I probably wrote it!
In response, by way of turnabout-is-fair-play, I choose to use the purple bag to prompt color and size choices in piecing together a card, using tiny scraps from my own vast amount of fodder hahaha!, on which to write an “Anne is” poem to tuck into the purple sleeve and send on its way.
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14 responses to “Deeply Seen and Known”
You and Anne are a match made in heaven. I love the way you banter back and forth with words and bits of art with such playfulness. Such an inspirational post!
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MaryAnn, yes! You totally GET this! Anne and I first connected at a meeting we both attended probably 30+ years ago and I immediately knew this was a keeper connection, one piece of which I totally enjoyed was that, even though we lived only about 25 minutes from each other, we corresponded regularly via the post for years as part of our friendship. That correspondence morphed into becoming both a correspondence and an exchange of mail art. We see each other far less regularly now but these recent exchanges by post have been magical and have included no traditional correspondence per se, no explanatory notes, no explicit greetings—just art of one sort or another. So much fun!
First of all, Happy Birthday! WOOOOHOOOO! And secondly, your art piece is like a graphic art novel page – is there such a thing? If not, there should be!
I love love love what Anne sent you, her process of slowly sifting and sharing stuff, how that stuff becomes something new in your hands, and then becomes more goodness and kindness in the world. Splendidness!!!! xo
Thanks for bday wishes—bday was on the 13th : )
A graphic art novel page, LOL!!! I’m liking the gist of that concept!
Isn’t this exchange w/ Anne fabulous? It’s kinda like a graphic art novel b/c SO much is communicated but she and I are not actually writing letters and we haven’t actually spoken in-person in probably the past year or so, but these little envelopes of sifted/shared/created stuff going back and forth are a conversation/correspondence nonetheless:
>>> The root word of “conversation” comes from the Latin word “conversari,” which itself derives from “com” (meaning “together”) and “versare” (meaning “to turn”). This suggests the original meaning of conversation was something like “turning together” or “interchanging with”.
>>> The word “correspondence” comes from Medieval Latin. It is derived from the Latin verb “correspondere,” which means “to match, to harmonize, to reciprocate.” This verb itself is formed from the Latin root “com-” (meaning “together, with”) and “respondere” (meaning “to answer, to reply”).
So, yeah, what you said!
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Even though this card and all its trappings got a little matchy-matchy with its color palette, the matchy-matchy stuff pleased me! And let’s hear it for word roots!!
where I land with my art journal exploration
