Blog / 2025 / Of Service

In the last few months, I’ve mailed three big paintings to clients across the country from me. Only the largest arrived on time, and that’s because I had to send it via commercial carrier due to the US Postal Service’s size limitations.

The other two artworks not only arrived late, but they required much filing of claims and wringing of hands on my part before making it to their destinations. It was as if the USPS had decided not to deliver the packages unless I repeatedly reminded it that a failure to do so would mean a payout of thousand dollars in insurance claims to me.

So, though it feels like a paper cut directly on my heart to say it, after 22 years of being a delighted and devoted painting-sending patron of the USPS, I’m officially announcing that I won’t be mailing large artworks through the post office again.

If you’re wondering why I’m being so dramatic, it’s not because I’m some stamp-loving nerd—though I most certainly am. It’s that the USPS is an embodiment of something powerful, and that’s service.

I’m not talking about “service” like at a restaurant or in the sense of “customer service.” Rather, the post office operates under what’s called a “universal service obligation.” This legal term describes a practice of providing a baseline level of a utility or resource for the same price to every resident, whether a person lives in a populated area or a rural one. Along with the mail, USOs make electricity and telecommunications available throughout the United States. And, though the legal term doesn’t necessarily apply to roads, hospitals, and schools, the concept of universal service is what makes these and many other lovely parts of civilization happen.

USOs are a way of acknowledging that something is essential to everyday life, to the point where everybody is equally entitled to it and therefore the government will do its best to be sure that everyone has access to that thing. It’s the most obvious way the government declares:

“We, the government, serve you, the people.”

This is not a popular concept in the current US administration, as the ongoing government shutdown proves. What’s more, the 47^th president is using the shutdown as an excuse to make cuts at what he calls “Democrat Agencies,” even though every kid in middle school social studies knows that government agencies don’t belong to any one party. They exist to serve all of us, much like a president does—though, of course, Donald Trump doesn’t seem to have caught on to that just yet.

But the concept of being of service to one another is misunderstood across party lines and in other sectors as well, including the arts. And I would know, because I like to show my art at public libraries.

In the last five years, I’ve had seven solo shows, and most of them were at a library, including the one that’s up right now at the Lambertville Free Public Library.

To many in the art world, this isn’t something to brag about, because they’ve adopted a snobby stance by default, and they’ve done so at least in part for practical reasons. These high end art dealers and auction houses are trying to sell stuff that society has been taught to view as superfluous, and they’re trying to sell that stuff for tens of thousands of dollars. They’re obviously going to need to play up a vibe of exclusivity to explain the price tag.

But a lot of artists, including me, aren’t into that. Of course we’d love to be paid well for our labor, but what we really want is for our work to be meaningful. In other words, we choose to be of service, and the library is an excellent place to do that.

Libraries, like the Postal Service, exist to ensure that everyone has access to essential resources. In the case of the library, that means books and media, but also classes and other community programs, including art shows.

This is one of the paintings on display at the Lambertville library right now. It’s titled If I Were You, I’d Call Me Us, a reference to the Ogden Nash poem “The Octopus” and a nod to the multitudes that each of us contain.

This image, like all the work currently up at the library, is about mental health, and it comes with a text that invites further reflection.

At my core, I’m a service-centered, USPS-using, library-loving artist, and this show is all about that, because, for this exhibit, the public is invited to hang their work on the wall as well. Specifically, I’m encouraging viewers to color in black-and-white illustrations of the images and display them next to my art.

If you like to color in company, come by the library on the 22^nd in the evening! I’ll be there with markers and my sense of whimsy for an artist talk and coloring social.

Lambertville Free Public Library
6 Lilly Street
Lambertville, NJ 08530

Open: now through November 26^th
Reception and coloring social: Wednesday October 22^nd from 7p to 8:30p