I have a passion for beautiful cards and paper. Some might even call it an obsession. I look for them wherever I go, often finding them in bookstores, art galleries, and charming gift shops.  Past finds have been companies like Stonehenge Publications, (www.stonehengedesigns.com) in the Corbett neighborhood of Portland, Oregon, a two-person company which specializes in cards with beautiful photographs accompanied by quotations from poets, writers, and philosophers. These cards are further enhanced by an easily detached bookmark that bears an image from the photograph and includes the quotation. In 2010, the owners opened Stonehenge Studios where they host art openings, poetry readings, concerts and storytelling events. Deborah DeWit Marchant, an Oregon photographer and painter, also has an exquisite line of cards with carefully chosen quotations. She has written a book about her artistic process called Traveling Light:  Chasing an Illuminated Life. Her cards can be found at her website, (http://www.dewit-marchant.com). Another favorite card company is Two Bad Mice out of England; these cards are small with charming watercolors, often touched by whimsy.

Recently I discovered a new artist, Pamela Zagarenski, whose cards are created from her own artwork accompanied by quotations from Hafiz to Lewis Carroll and from Meister Eckhart to Gunilla Norris.   If you can’t find her cards in any of your local stores, you can go to her website, www.pzagarenski.com, and order cards directly from her. She lives in Mystic, Connecticut and currently only one gallery back East  carries her paintings. I am hoping one day she will have a show on the West Coast. I discovered an interview with her at blaine.org, a blog about books called Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast. If you click on interviews with illustrators, an alphabetized list will come up. The interview contains information that captures something of Zagarenski’s personality and creative approaches, illustrated with many of her paintings. She is also an award winning children’s book illustrator; this last year she illustrated the Caldecott Honor Book, Sleep Like a Tiger by Mary Logue. In October of 2013 her illustrations will grace a children’s book written by Joyce Sidman called What the Heart Knows:  Charms, Chants, Blessings. I find her artwork both whimsical, symbolic, and marked by spiritual wisdom.

For those of you who reside in Oregon, I will share a few of my favorite places to find cards:  my beloved local independent bookstore, Grass Roots Books & Music (Corvallis); the lobby of the Sylvia Beach Hotel in Nye Beach (the card buyer there has superb taste); and in Portland–The Arrangement on Fremont Ave.,  Annie Bloom’s Books in Multnomah Village, and Broadway Books.

But finding beautiful cards is only part of the quest for “the perfect card.” Part of the art is selecting the right card for a specific person or occasion. When I buy cards, I organize them in a two-sided cloth pouch. The left side is organized by month and is reserved primarily for birthdays. The other side contains a variety of cards that could be used for other specific occasions or simply a card for a particular person for no reason other than to evoke delight. If a card “speaks” a specific person’s name, I put that person’s name on the envelope to “reserve it.” I strongly prefer my cards to be blank inside because I want to write my own messages.

I admit that having a passion for beautiful cards can be an expensive venture. However, I derive such pleasure from cards. Sometimes I will place a card on a small easel and enjoy its beauty before I send it out to the person it is intended for. Other times I will sit in my window seat and look through all the cards in my pouch (and the ones that spill over into my desk drawers when my collection is abundant). I simply enjoy touching the quality of the paper, delighting in the images, thinking about the people I will send them to. In a time when letters are being replaced by quick emails, cards are a gift of beauty, an act of remembrance and regard.