Boomerang

Today, as I was walking down the street to lunch & stopped at an intersection I noticed a small, ratty little sketch pad. A Strathmore 400-1 4”x6” multi use. I know this because I used to work in an art supply store for 7 years in & just out of art school…

When I got back to the office, I flipped around the pad & looked for a contact address so I could return it (an unspoken code among artist) there were half a dozen or so charming little drawings & thumbnail sketches as well as various “to do” list & class notations. The usual filling one would find in an artist sketch book. the information I gleaned from the contents, I was able to deduce the owner was probably a female printmaker. Etching. The very last page had a delightful illustration of a dragon standing on its hind legs with an extremely barbed tail end. I assume this was done by a child-relative of the owner.

Anyway, the most peculiar/wonderful part of this find was the little tags on the front and back. On the front was a price tag & on the back was an anti-theft sticker with the “check-mark” add-on to mute the anti-theft devise.

The kicker is this, the price tag on the front of the pad had the name of the exact art store I worked at with the phone number I still know, the price AND the date: 07/01/89.

When I worked at the store.

Because one of my many task was to price all incoming art papers and pads, its dead on that I put that price sticker on the front and the anti-theft sticker on the back. Heck, I probably even rang it up on the register.

19 YEARS AGO.

I wonder what path this pad went down after it left my hands all those years ago only to find its way back into my hands, today.