TACOMA FOUND ART

 

I worked for a time in Tacoma. The city had promise but seemed never able to overcome its rough edges. Ones made even sharper by its being wedged between a port and lofty foothills. A great place for long walks, but not commerce.

Still there were unique finds in the nooks and crannies, one here and then in several blocks another. Oddities like the manuscript museum, the toy train maker and the fashion designer. It made up for the overcast bleakness of the place. If you looked hard enough you could find art there. 

So it was that I discovered The Nook, a small house next to Discovery Park, its long winding paths always beckoning. The Nook piled deep in collectibles and no organization. A natural magnet for types like me. Gus, the owner specialized in all sorts of things, but the boxes of old envelope covers, correspondence and stamps drew me the most. Especially the foreign ones. You could always find Gus working on something, sorting stamps, repairing old frames holding forgotten art. 

Gus never had much to say, but confided to me one day that “he like to see me coming.” The reason, I knew nothing about collecting stamps or covers. He was right of course, I did know nothing, except art when I saw it. So I would sort through the unorganized boxes, finding an artful cover now and then. I never paid much attention to price, it just art to me. 

I never quite knew what I would do with the covers and still don’t. Some I framed, others I painted or used in collages. Mostly though the covers had traded places in Gus’s unorganized boxes for mine. Still over time some did become by accident quite valuable, but they had always been that way to me…