Dear Everyone ~
We invite Everyone to enter our drawing, to be held on Monday, May 13, 2024. Guess how you enter? By sending a 5 x 7 postcard (no envelopes, please) to A–Z at Bari Zaki Studio, 3858 N. Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60613. Your card will require real stamps (at least 68¢, not the postcard rate), and it must be received, via USPS, by Friday, May 10. Further practicalities below.
Let us not put the card before the hoarse. Here, as pithily as possible, is an explanation of why we are having a drawing. My postal muse, Alyson Kuhn, is coming to Chicago with her niece Audrey Kuhn, another AK. (Photographer John Madere chose his favourite shot of Alyson, commenting, “You look like you’ve just won the Academy Award for Stationery!”) Audrey has her aunt’s stationery-hound inclinations, and her own jaunty hand-lettering style. Here is my freshest missive from Audrey, an homage to the arrival of spring. She notes, “This neon ombré ink pad is a bit more aggressive than I planned but maybe it reads as SPRING vs. spring.”
Who else will join our papery party? Ruby LaPorta, my current nimble shop assistant extraordinaire, will be there. Scene below is her desk in action.
And Emmy Kennett, my original nimble shop assistant extraordinaire (now emerita). Scene below is her sitting room without her sitting in it. She’s in the process of painting the walls.
And Janet Bouldin, BZS’s in-house watercolourist & illustrator. Here she is in her home studio, painting BZS’s Rag & Pulp bookmarks.
And Tammy Stams, my co-stitcher, waxed-thread winder, and vintage-postage assembler. Below is Tammy’s craft emporium.
We have also invited Wendy Sherwood to motor in from The Wiilds of Minnesota to join us. Wendy is not The Mystery Guest, she is The Marble-y Guest, and she has made a previous guest appearance at BZS. Here she is, in her studio, with a wallpaper of actual sheets she has marbled… and a bounty of boxes she has covered.
So, the octet of us will have a paper-palooza. We will talk ourselves silly. We will bring each other papery party favours. And, most importantly, we will make something together… to give away to The Winner of the Drawing, who could be You! Not a kit, not a keepsake, more of a mini-compendium of our papery predilections… which is apt to be wrapped in a multi-media manner.
And Audrey will fabulously photodocument, both via vignette and video, the proceedings. Here she is, shooting for one of her restaurant clients. (Photographer Frankie Frankeny, Audrey’s mentor, took this photo, frankly perfect for our purposes.)
Back to your postcard: Include your full name and email address and show-or-tell us, on either side (or both!), visually or verbally, why you are entering, or something about your relationship with paper, or something else altogether. We will enjoy reading Everyone’s response—possibly together, possibly out loud— but this is not an essay contest. The winner will be chosen totally at random. In fact, the winning card will be pulled out of a hat. We cannot divulge at this moment who will do the actual drawing, but we can hint: We would describe the person as a local epistolary celebrity.
And what will become of the glorious postcards? It’s absolutely too soon to tell. But when we know, so will you!
Excitedly, Bari