Holden Beach   May 18

Serendipity is one of the joys of doing this, discovering enjoyable/interesting things you didn’t expect. Today it was Mary Paulsen. I had been alerted to her by my daughter-in-law Leah who shares my love of quirky, off-beat art. But even if I hadn’t been on the lookout for Mary’s place, it’s very hard not to notice it.

Sitting along the road leading to Holden Beach, Mary’s folk art garden, baby doll village, bottle buildings and artworks lure you in.

There’s something about Mary…her contagious laughter, her magical garden and her brightly colored paintings on the reverse side of discarded windows, pieces of junk wood, bottles, furniture, tiles, and just about anything that people throw away that keeps people coming back.

In 1996 God told Mary to build a doll village using her collection of 6,000 dolls to help feed hungry children. She created the village but also felt moved to paint—on anything. Mary has now saved thousands of pounds of trash from the local landfill by recycling those unwanted goods into bright, happy, make-you-smile art that she sells. Feed The Children has given her an award for feeding more than 45,000 children so far.

“I just paint and create what comes to me,” she told me. “I have so many ideas that I have to write them on two pages of legal-size paper so I won’t forget them.”

She favors bright colors because” they make you feel happy.”

To see more of her work and to learn more about Mary, go to: www.marysgonewild.com

To make a donation to the ALSA, please go to: http://web.alsa.org/goto/deirdresride