Kyle Melnick
Sonja Krawesky was searching through a box of old phone cases, fake mustaches and rip-off Oscar statues at an Ontario discount store in November when she found something that looked out of place.
It was an orange, wave-shaped piece of artwork that was sewed together with wire. Krawesky said it was beautiful, unique, in good condition and only $3.50, so she added it - and a similarly designed blue sculpture - to her bag.
When Krawesky researched the artwork online, she confirmed her suspicions that the sculptures were not made for a discount store but actually sold for thousands of dollars.
Sydney Blum, an artist about 850 miles away in Nova Scotia, had spent about 300 hours working on the sculptures to send to Montreal for an art fair. But the pieces were lost after she mailed them in October, she said, prompting her to contact dozens of people in Canada to try to find them.
Then she received an unsolicited email from a stranger in December: It was Krawesky, who wrote that she had found the wayward art.
Now, the sculptures hang from a wall in Blum’s studio, and the series of unlikely events has initiated a friendship between Blum, 74, and Krawesky, 50.
“They’re not going to be on my walls, but that’s okay,” Krawesky told The Washington Post. “The story was so much better than the art on my walls.”
Blum named her series of 3D sculptures “Icarus-Colour-Space” because she hoped her work would evoke a sensation of soaring toward the sky, like the mythological Greek figure Icarus, who flew too close to the sun. She crafted the artworks by cutting chipboard into hundreds of pieces, which she painted, arranged into colorful patterns and stitched into sinuous forms with steel wire and glue.
“It pulls them in without them really knowing it,” Blum said of her artwork, “and takes them to another part of themselves.”
She made one sculpture that is orange and scarlet with hints of teal and umber, and another that is blue and turquoise with hints of yellow and red, for a Toronto art fair last fall. She planned to sell the orange sculpture for about $5,600 and the blue one for roughly $3,700.
On Oct. 1, Blum said she shipped the sculptures after wrapping them in a box and taping on a piece of paper that said the address in bold, black letters. But after the box arrived in Montreal two days later, Blum said, it couldn’t be found. An online tracker only said the package was on its way for days, she added.
Blum lost motivation to work, fearing she would never see the sculptures again.
Valérie Chartrand, a Canada Post spokeswoman, wrote in an email to The Post that employees from Canada’s main postal operator searched their facilities and the package’s check points after Blum reported her artwork had not arrived at its destination.
“Unfortunately, nothing conclusive was found and we can only speculate at this point as to what may have happened,” Chartrand wrote.
Weeks after the package was lost, in November, Krawesky was looking for home decorations at a Krazy Binz Liquidation store in Hamilton, Ontario, when she came across two sculptures. Krawesky was on leave as an elementary schoolteacher due to her mental health, she said, but the sculptures’ beauty elevated her mood. Krawesky wasn’t sure she needed them but ultimately decided she couldn’t leave without them.
In her home in Caledonia, Ontario, Krawesky searched images of the sculptures online through Google Lens. If the sculptures were sold on Amazon, Krawesky wanted to buy more. If they weren’t, she wanted to know where the sculptures came from.
She ultimately found images of similar sculptures on Blum’s Instagram page and saw a post from October that shared they had been lost.
“Recently I was invited to participate in Art Toronto with the Robertson Ares Gallery of Montreal,” Blum wrote in October. “I was thrilled! I packed up the work, sent it via Canada Post and it never arrived; Canada Post LOST my two pieces of sculpture! Very bummed.”
Somehow, the sculptures ended up at a Krazy Binz in Ontario about six weeks after Blum had shipped them. But luckily for Blum, they had fallen into the right hands. Krawesky wanted to return them to her.
“I tell long stories, and oh what a story I’ve got to tell you,” Krawesky wrote near the beginning of an email to Blum in December.
Krawesky wrote that the sculptures were safe. She was eager to hang them up, she wrote, but she figured there was a story behind them being sold at Krazy Binz.
“I love them and have intensely connected with them … but they aren’t really mine to keep,” Krawesky wrote.
Blum initially thought the email was a scam. But after Krawesky sent pictures of the sculptures, Blum felt ecstatic that a stranger was uplifted by her artwork - a feeling she aims to evoke.
They tried to arrange for Blum to retrieve her artwork, but a roughly 17-hour drive separated them, and Blum didn’t trust the sculptures to be delivered via mail.
But Blum’s mutual friend, Robert Mietus, happened to be driving home to Nova Scotia after visiting family in Chicago, and Ontario was on his way. The 49-year-old picked up a wrapped box of the sculptures from Krawesky in late December, secured it in the back of his Toyota Highlander, and helped deliver it to Blum by the end of the month.
Blum and Krawesky now talk a few times every week, and they hope to meet in person soon. The sculptures are in good condition, Blum said, and she hopes to sell them at an art show in June.
In late January, Blum mailed a collage of colorful graphics she uses to outline her sculptures to Krawesky. The package arrived at its intended destination this time and came with a note.
“Sonja, so many thank yous for all you’ve done & who you are,” Blum wrote.