As a lobbyist, he added flair to his envelopes. Now they’re his canvas.

Mary Divine, Pioneer Press
·15 min read
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Afton artist John Kaul remembers sending the first letters of his life to his paternal grandmother, Eva Kaul, in Faribault.

The letters — “probably notes about school, or thank-you notes” — were the precursor of many to come.

“I keep making the somewhat exaggerated claim that I am one of a dozen people in the country who are still sending personal notes,” said Kaul, 77, a painter, photographer and documentary filmmaker. “Actually, I’m not sure that is much of an exaggeration.”

Kaul started collecting postage stamps when he was about 10. “My dad brought home from work envelopes with stamps coming from around the world,” he said. “I learned geography and history from stamps, and how Minnesota fit in the larger scheme of things.”

A more unusual hobby followed when he turned 18. He became a quotation enthusiast one day when he was reading a book in his family’s back yard in Bloomington. “I found a nice turn of phrase and wrote it down on a 3-by-5 index card and saved it,” he said. “I now have 10,000 quotations in a database that I can search by topic or by author, so I can find things when I need to say something.”

Kaul began combining his love of letter writing, stamp collecting and quotation collecting with another longtime interest — drawing — a few years ago after he retired from his 48-year career as a lobbyist and staffer at the Minnesota Capitol.

“I’ve always been someone who sent thank-you notes, and I always tried to dress up my letters to people with interesting stamps,” he said. “Sometimes there would be a theme. If I was sending it to an environmentalist, I might put environmental stamps on it. If I was in a colorful mood, I might put a bunch of red stamps on it. If I was in a melancholy mood, I might use blue stamps. If I was sending a letter to a Democratic majority leader, I would put stamps featuring Democrats, or with a Republican, I would put Republicans.”

After working with two professional musicians on a video to support friend and artist Kami Mendlik, Kaul said he decided to send them thank-you notes, but “up my game a little bit.”

“I took out some watercolors, and I did a primitive George Gershwin on one — the pianist — and I did Rachmaninoff, I think, on the one to the cellist,” he said. “They were pretty primitive, but they were fun.”

Kaul created another 50 pieces of “envelope art” — complete with a portrait, corresponding stamps and a quotation — and mailed them off to different people.

“I got such a nice reaction from it, I thought, ‘Well, these are starting to look OK. Maybe I should do a show,'” he said. “I’ve done about 200 of them now. I’ve gotten a lot better. Those talents that I had in my youth kept coming back.”

An exhibition of Kaul’s artwork, “Philately Meets Portraiture,” is on display at the Groveland Gallery in Minneapolis until March 2. Kaul will speak at an event at the gallery from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Thursday.

‘Commentary on humanity’

Kaul’s exhibition features 20 likenesses of people known for their influence on art, music, literature, history, popular culture, world politics and philosophy. Subjects include Georgia O’Keeffe, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Anne Frank, Igor Stravinsky, Bertolt Brecht, Jane Goodall and Reinhold Niebuhr.

One of Kaul’s favorites is a bright pink envelope that features a portrait of David Lloyd George, the British prime minister during World War I, and two David Lloyd George stamps. The quotation reads: “Never attempt to leap a chasm in two bounds.” “He was talking about pursuing the war with all the energy Britain had, so they could end it,” Kaul said.

Kaul said he decided to paint Albert Pinkham Ryder because he liked this quotation by the artist: “Have you ever seen an inchworm crawl up a leaf or a twig, and then, clinging to the very end, revolve in the air, feeling for something, to reach something? That’s like me. I am trying to find something out there beyond the place on which I have footing.”

Pointing to a portrait of theologian Niebuhr, Kaul recited the accompanying quotation: “Frantic orthodoxy is never rooted in faith but in doubt.”

“There’s kind of a message in my stuff here,” he said. “Take Oppenheimer. The quote is: ‘Physicists have known sin.’ Physicists were seduced by the prospect of (building the first atomic bomb) and they didn’t spend enough time considering what the impact of that would be.”

The artworks reflect Kaul’s “ceaseless concern for the subtle and blatant world of policymaking as he sees it,” said Andrea Bubula, the gallery’s executive director. “Each piece commands close inspection: How much commentary on humanity can fit on a 6-by-9-inch envelope?”

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Kaul started working at the Minnesota Senate in 1971, when he was 23. He served as chief of staff to then-Senate Majority Leader Nicholas Coleman, a Democrat, from 1974 to 1980. Later, he worked as a lobbyist for various causes, including chief lobbyist for Minnesota State Universities from 1987 to 1993 and chief lobbyist for Minnesota State Colleges and Universities from 1993 to 2000.

In 2000, he started his own lobbying firm, Capitol Gains, and represented, among others, Washington County, Rochester Public Schools, the Minnesota Hospital Association, Minnesota Twins, Andersen Corp., Minnesota Humanities Commission and the city of Minneapolis. He retired in 2019.

“I had a rich life at the Capitol,” he said. “I was never elected to office, but I got to know the history makers. I was kind of like a caddie. I didn’t hit the ball, but I advised the golfers on what clubs to use and where the sand traps and water hazards were.”

Kaul has worked on a number of documentaries, including “Girl from Birch Creek,” the story of the life of the late Minnesota Supreme Court Justice Rosalie Wahl, which debuted in 2012, and “Madeline Island and the Art of the String Quartet.” In 2016, Kaul and Tom Reiter co-produced “Rebirth: The Mississippi’s National Park,” a partnership with Friends of the Mississippi River and Twin Cities Public Television. Kaul’s film “The Wild and Scenic St. Croix,” which premiered in June 2018, celebrates the 50th anniversary of the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act.

Kaul and his wife, Gloria, have lived on a 5½-acre property in Afton for 34 years. They have three children and two grandchildren.

John Kaul Q&A

In an interview with the Pioneer Press, Kaul talked about his artwork, the United States Postal Service and his collection of more than 10,000 quotations. The transcript has been edited for clarity and conciseness.

Q: When did you start drawing?

A: Whenever I was bored in school, listening to the teacher or whatever, I would be doodling. It didn’t help my grades much, but it did sharpen my drawing skills. I got into oil painting in my late teens, and I did it for a number of years. I did landscapes, and then I quit because I had too many other demands. I had always wondered if I started painting again — if I found the time with all my other activities — how would that neural itch manifest itself? Would I go back to landscapes? Would all the art I studied in the meantime inform my painting and make it much more interesting and original?

Q: Take us through the process of creating a piece of envelope art.

A: The smaller ones — 8½ by 5½ inches — take about nine hours to complete. The bigger ones take longer. The envelopes are 100 percent cotton. I get them at Paper Source. I started out with watercolor, which I never thought I would like because it’s so thin and watery, but then I Iearned about gouache. Gouache is watercolor, but with some substance to it. It applies like oils. With oils, you paint, and the next day, you go back, and the paint is already dry, and you can’t undo anything. With gouache, it never sets up, and so you can continually change things and modify things until you’re done. When you’re done, you put a thin layer of cold wax on it … and you let it dry for about four hours. Then you buff it up, and it shines, and it’s waterproof.

Q: What comes first — the stamp or the quotation?

A: It’s a process. Sometimes it’s a postage stamp that will inspire me. Sometimes it’s a quote or an event that happens. You just never know.

Q: Do you send the envelopes in the mail?

A: I do, but I put them in a nice protective package. The Postal Service has been very nice to them, but they do put a lot of ink on them on the bottom in addition to the cancellation. I thought, “If I’m giving them to friends, I want them to be in good shape.”

Q: Where do you paint?

A: We have a TV room, and my wife, who does not like clutter, has graciously consented to let me have a corner in that room where I can make a mess as long as it doesn’t expand too far beyond this kind of round table on which I paint. Our tradition is: Every night we always have a date, and we watch some series on TV. I paint and kind of peek up at the series, and she watches it. It’s our time together.

Q: What are you watching?

A: We just watched “Line of Fire.” Before that, we were watching “Happy Valley.” We just tapped into Larry David’s last season of “Curb Your Enthusiasm.”

Q: Can you talk about the importance of a hand-written thank-you note? I will be sharing this with my children.

A: Thank-you notes are a lost art for two reasons. Most people don’t bother to say thanks, and an email doesn’t have the same touch as a letter. It’s just nice to get an acknowledgment when you do something for someone. If you do something thoughtful, it’s nice to know if your gesture hit the mark.

Q: I’m worried about the future of letter writing.

A: Me, too. I think it was John Donne who said, “Letters mingle souls.” What insights will future historians be able to glean about the personal lives and the character of our leaders in 50 years based on a few surviving emails written in haste with poor grammar and punctuation? A letter is a much more personal and intimate way to communicate with another human being.

Q: Where do you find your stamps?

A: I’ve got a huge collection because I’ve been collecting stamps since I was 10. You can buy all kinds of stamps on eBay. Since I’ve gotten serious about these envelopes, if I want to do an envelope of Anne Frank, which I did, I searched eBay for Israeli- or Jewish-themed stamps. If I do Rachmaninoff, I search eBay for Russian stamps. I can find any stamp I want on eBay to meet any theme.

Q: How much do you spend on them?

A: You should see my American Express bill. I’ve been a little out of control. Fortunately, I have been selling some of these envelopes, so I think I’ll be able to keep going. My goal is not to get rich but to break even on this. Gloria has a mantra: “Let John be John.” As long as I don’t get too out of control, it’s OK.

Q: Self-adhesive stamps versus lick-and-stick stamps. What do you think? Are there any stamps you like anymore?

A: I’m glad you brought that up because for at least the last 20 years, stamps are no better quality than the printing you’d find in a magazine. All the beauty of postage stamps is gone. When I send postage stamps, I do not use any U.S. postage stamps from the last 20 years. That’s kind of fun because in order to send a letter for 68 cents, you have to use 12 6-cent stamps. If you’re using 3-cent stamps, you might have to throw in a 10-cent stamp, just so you have room for an address. I’m using a lot of 3- and 4-cent stamps because they are the beautiful ones. I mean, they are beautiful. They’re engraved. They are works of art. It’s the same quality of engraving that you see on a dollar bill.

Q: What else are you working on?

A: I’ve been working on a photo exhibition called “Heroes in Our Time.” I was inspired by former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch’s testimony in Congress and by her book “Lessons From the Edge.” I wanted to take a portrait of her to start this collection of portraits honoring people with courage, so I sent her a letter with her portrait painted on it. She didn’t know me from a bale of hay. Two months later, she contacted me and said, ‘Are you still interested?’ In October 2022, I flew to D.C., and she invited me to her home, and I interviewed her for an hour and took her portrait.

Q: What is the focus of the exhibit?

A: The focus is on political courage, but it’s not limited to that aspect of courage alone. I decided two years ago that those of us who wish to preserve what Liz Cheney — who will be featured in the exhibition — appropriately refers to as our “Constitutional Republic” need to up our game when it comes to courage and action going into the 2024 election — for obvious reasons.

Q: How has your envelope art affected your photography?

A: Working on these paintings has really informed my photography because when you stare at an image for seven or eight hours when you’re painting it, you really study every detail of a face. So now when I’ve got someone in front of my camera, my eyes see a lot differently than they used to.

Q: You were known around the Capitol for the photos you took at the end of each session.

A: I’m sure I took thousands and thousands of pictures. I called it “End of Session Voyeurism” because I would do it at the end of the session when all lobbyists were standing around speculating what was going on behind closed doors. I got tired of that, so I just captured the transactions that go on — the human transactions.

Q: Did your collection of quotations come in handy when working at the Capitol?

A: Yes. I had to do a lot of reporting either in writing or before boards. When I was hired as the lobbyist for the State Universities, I didn’t think I was a good writer, and I had to write weekly reports for thousands of people with PhDs. I found that that quote collection was invaluable in helping me spice up my weekly reports, which became quite popular.

Q: How did you collect them?

A: I quit drinking, and I quit smoking, and I quit chasing, so when I was traveling a lot for my job, I was gone for two or three days a week. I would do a lot of reading, and it’s continued from that point forward.

Q: Three favorite quotations?

A: “You must know chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.” — Friedrich Nietzsche

“Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and help save the soul of America.” — John Lewis

“Don’t wait for the Last Judgment. It happens every day.” — Albert Camus

Q: On top of everything else, I understand you also are an extraordinary gardener.

A: The death of my son Matt, a victim of schizophrenia, in 1992 was the impetus for the garden, one of my most mammoth artistic enterprises. While Matt was still alive and suffering from the illness every day, I began to build a garden to keep busy and occupied. I kid people when I say it is one of two man-made objects that can be seen from outer space — the other is the Great Wall of China. I’ve been working on it for 34 years. It has water features and walls and is a football field and a half long. Gloria was very much involved and invested in its development and maintenance.

Q: I am so very sorry. Can you tell me more about Matt?

A: Matt was the sweetest child and so very loving. He had a gift for music, and there were signs in his drawings and paintings of a budding artist. I think one of the reasons I’ve stayed so frenetically busy all these intervening years has been to stay ahead of the black cloud of grief. He was a beautiful soul who died at age 19 and never had a chance to have a family or meet the challenges of carving out a life in this all too random and chaotic world we inhabit. The garden helps me keep him alive and honors his all-too-short life. Hug your loved ones today. Life is so precious, but so fragile and random.

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