Selected Articles and TV Broadcast Stories
Media Inquiries
We love working with journalists to share our positive, uplifting mailbox stories highlighting the abundance of unique creativity found on Bainbridge Island and throughout the PNW. If you’re a member of the media and would like to talk, please get in touch at bainbridgemailboxes@gmail.com.
The Mailbox Journey
The mailbox journey began in May 2022 when Denise Stoughton started documenting Bainbridge Island’s curiously creative mailboxes for her forthcoming book titled, Meet Me at the Mailbox. Denise believes in celebrating mailbox artistry to spark and strengthen community bonds, ignite creativity and as a dearly needed respite from negative news. She photographs the mailboxes and writes their stories while artist collaborator Shelley Wallace Ylst, brings the personalized mailboxes to life through her delightful watercolor interpretations. After publishing Meet Me at the Mailbox, Denise plans to write a children’s book based on the illustrated mailbox characters. On suspicion of mail theft, after what eventually unfolded as a humorous encounter with the Bainbridge police department Denise gained local notoriety as “The Mailbox Lady”. The Mailbox Lady was then tipped off to a famous mailbox on Bird Island, NC called Kindred Spirit which sent Denise on her first Bipostal Mailboxing Adventure. She hopes to have more! Back at home in the PNW, her talent as a writer landed a Seattle Times Pacific NW Magazine cover story about Bainbridge’s personalized mailboxes. A segment on Seattle’s KING 5 Evening Magazine followed. Denise continues to shine a light on the creativity of everyday people and to encourage people to take notice of both the natural and man-made beauty in their environment.
Denise Stoughton Bio
An unreliable childhood shaped my “how-much-worse-can-it-get?” life philosophy. Truth, this question ought never be spoken, muttered or thought. Someone will hear it and someone will happily show you (thanks mom). Even so, I carried immutable optimism for the future and attribute this unrealistically positive outlook to fluffy-haired bands Bon Jovi, Journey and Survivor. Living on a Prayer, Don’t Stop Believing, Eye of the Tiger – ‘nuff said. Special mention to Pat Benatar for Invincible. Thanks guys. I may have taken my confidence (and this metaphor) to an Extreme. More than Words, my solitary college application included a design portfolio which spoke for itself and I attended The Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. Design student by day, I accidentally-on-purpose became a scantily clad Club Kid nymph by night. Post Andy Warhol, Club Kids felt entitled to at least fifteen minutes of fame, but shamelessly vied for more. Ru Paul got it. Really Denise, as I was known received the kind of education in art, culture, gender, drag, fashion, hip-hop, deep house, skater boys, graffiti and the mysteries of life between 42nd street and the Meat Packing District that one could only accrue from having been young, broke, ambitious, naïve and culture-curious in the molten cocktail of glamour and decay that characterized pre-Giuliani New York. I drank it up. Having graduated and wafted into a period as a design executive in the home fashions industry I learned a proper amount of professionalism, discipline and conformism. I felt accomplished but not wholly alive. It wasn’t until facing a circumstance akin to having been misfired into the world as a teenager, did I gather the old gumption and reinvent myself (again). A dose of how-much-worse-can-it-get and a dollop of nowhere-to-go-but-up, provided a unique opportunity to become the version of myself I’d always hoped I’d become – a gritty, girly, glamorous, no-nonsense, go-getter – authentically me, Really Denise in every sense. My focus remains on art, design, culture, people, extremes, stories and the subtle almost undetectable, shifts in thinking, doing, taking action that result in unique creativity.