Ellen

I know you’re supposed to pretend you don't hear what strangers around you are talking about, but when the woman minding the store at Tiny Town Surplus — a shop and gallery on Fourth Avenue — was talking with some other customers, I overheard her name and wondered if she might be the same illustrator Ellen Wagner whose name appears on many of the colorful screen printed pieces there that were filling me with a groovy sort of joy. The colors and playful energy in those prints were giving me a rush not unlike what I think you might experience in an aerobics class taught by Josephine Baker.