Two nurses at the Medical Arts office managed to get through the holiday season without getting tickets for trespassing or traffic violations.
Becky Ziegler and Cindy Senne spent several months driving around the area, searching for natural shapes that resembled letters of the alphabet that could be used to spell the surnames of the 17 doctors, nurse practitioners and managers at Medical Arts.
“You’re driving down the street, looking for these things, and you about wreck your car because you’re looking for stuff,” Ziegler said, laughing with Senne about the search that became almost obsessive.
Often they had to walk into yards on private property to get close enough to photograph the shapes they spied from the street.
By the time they were finished, the pair had collected a shoebox full of several hundred photographs, tucked neatly behind alphabetic file cards and ready to be assembled into surnames and readied for matting and framing into wall art.
Those gifts, given from the Medical Arts staff, were presented to the doctors and nurse practitioners during the group’s Christmas party on Dec. 20.
“They’re very hard to find a gift for,” said Ziegler of the annual decision.
Staff often takes up a collection and makes a charitable donation in their bosses’ names, Ziegler said, but in 2008 some staff members wanted to give something tangible. That’s when she remembered seeing letters made from shapes at a show in Hillsboro, and staff agreed the concept could be developed into one-of-a-kind gifts to hang on the walls of the offices.
“Then some of the girls will have Cindy do them for their family,” Ziegler said.
The “O” for licensed practical nurse Ruth Clock’s name, for example, was easy — a round clock.
Others were not so simple.
Ziegler and Senne weren’t satisfied with merely spelling a name with letters made from shapes, such as the “A” found in an open ladder or the curlicued “R” they saw bracing a wrought-iron railing.
They tried to connect something about the letters to make them unique to the individual who would receive the gift.
“Like Dr. Smiley likes football, so his ‘Y’ is a goalpost,” Ziegler explained.
Architectural features, like trim and oddly shaped windows, lent themselves to letters. Often, it took only turning the shape in the right direction.
“Hey, Becky!” Senne called out as they went through the photos before the gifts were made.
Senne held up a photograph of an “M” shaped with humps rather than sharp peaks.
She turned it on its side to reveal something they’d both missed earlier.
“I never saw a B in that,” Ziegler said.
Senne turned it again.
“And an E.”
They brought the diverse assortment of photographs to the gift committee to let them make the final choices on what letters would be used.
“I wasn’t going to choose any of the letters for any of the doctors, because I took them and I had my favorites,” Senne said.
A hubcap that formed an unusual C seemed to be perfect to use for car enthusiast Dr. Tom Hicks’ name, but it was rejected by the committee.
“To me, it worked out, but everybody else in the committee didn’t think it would fit,” Senne said. “It was one of my favorites, but I was biased.”
And, the committee, in the long run, made the right choice.
“Dr. Hicks’s came out really nice,” Senne said.
They were satisfied that all of the framed names turned out well, and were pleased that the gifts were one-of-a-kind.
The project taught them to look at shapes in the world with a different kind of eye. The women learned to do that so well, it left a lingering after-effect.
“In fact now, that’s all I see any more is letters,” Senne said. “I’m telling you that’s all I see. Becky’s and my life changed.”