so i was at the grocery store last night, and although i didn't have an urgent need to buy tissues, there was an in-store cross-brand discount promotion (spend x, save y) that included kleenex. kleenex usually has some unique boxes, so i checked the selection and found a lone square box covered in fantastic owls and cursive (i was thorough, it was definitely the last of its kind). so if not for the promotion i more than likely would've never encountered this box art. there was no listing of the artist on the box (unlike, say, the mountain dew art bottles i collected which featured, among others, stephen bliss), and i didn't have high expectations of finding who it was, figuring it was probably an unnamed inhouse artist somewhere, but i scanned the web to see what i could find. the kleenex website doesn't list the design among the current crop of expressions square boxes, and google was coming up empty.

but here is the google luck coincidence that led to finding the artist: my google image search was for 'kleenex expressions owls'. well to the bottom, on the top of page 8, was a small thumbnail of a girl holding two owls, and i recognized the resemblance. the image had been featured in november 2009 in this person's blog, and the only reason that this came up on the search is that owls were discussed in another entry that month (not in the entry referencing this image), the word 'expression' appears in another entry, and the word 'kleenex' appears in a third entry, one of the things the blogger is grateful for, in a little poem about thanksgiving. a quite unlikely coincidence.

that blog entry linked directly to the artist's etsy shop which listed the artist's full name, and a quick google later, i was reading the artist's blog entry about how she came to illustrate a kleenex box, with a story of synchronicity as terrific as any i've ever reported here. it's worth reading.