The Salem News - April 28, 2007

Doing a double take: Cummings Center mailman honored with life-size portrait
The Salem News

BEVERLY - Artists Jeanne Westra and Robin Corio have painted some strange things together - portraits of dogs, cats and dead relatives - but this one really pushes the envelope.

The women co-own Two Girls and a Paintbrush, a high-end portrait studio in the Cummings Center. This week, they surprised the office park mailman, Jerry Hoffmann, with a life-size portrait of himself.

"The first time they showed it to me, I was beside myself!" joked Hoffmann, 60, a Beverly resident who has been delivering mail for 25 years.

Westra and Corio said they were inspired to paint Hoffmann because he is such a welcoming presence in the sprawling office park. Hoffmann makes 350 deliveries a day to approximately half the businesses in the Cummings Center. He always greets employees by name, with a smile and a wave.

"He's so cheery," Westra said. "He's such a wonderful person. We all miss Jerry when he's not here."

This winter, Hoffmann's absence was felt as he recovered from a rotator cuff injury after slipping on ice while delivering residential mail. Two weeks ago, as Hoffmann was about to depart again on a weeklong cruise with his family, Westra and Corio managed to snap a photo of him.

"We told him we'd miss him," Westra said.

Westra and Corio spent all last week on the portrait. Using oils on a 6-foot-11/2-inch piece of polished birch plywood, they meticulously recreated every facet of Hoffmann's appearance - even his watch, which he wears backward, and his thumb, which he blackened a few weeks ago in his workshop. For fear of copyright infringement, though, they replaced the words "United States Postal Service" with "World's Best Mail Man."

They then cemented their creation in a pair of black work boots and hid it in the bathroom. On Monday, when Hoffmann returned, they asked him if he could open the door and reach something on the top shelf.

"I was amazed," Hoffmann said. "These are two extremely gifted, talented women. I think I look better than I do in real life."

"The Jerry," as the portrait has come to be called, now stands at the end of a hallway outside Westra and Corio's suite. It is creating quite a sensation inside the 3,500-person office park, drawing employees even from the opposing 900 building to come take a peek.

"Jerry is larger than life here," said Jen Martin, owner of The Tile Source. "He's a bright spot in everybody's day. Everybody looks forward to seeing him."

The portrait has inspired its fair share of confusion, as well. Several employees have done double takes as they walked down the hallway, and one woman nearly filed a complaint, Westra said, saying she thought Jerry was staring at her.

"I thought, 'Why isn't Jerry responding to me as I'm walking toward him?'" said Brenda Naco, an accounting manager with Hamilton Thorne Biosciences Inc. "He had the feet and was doing the whole 3-D thing, but he wasn't saying hi.'"

Steve Drohasky, Cummings Center's vice president and general manager, cited the portrait as an example of the community that has emerged within the office park, which employees have referred to as "a city within a city."

"It's shows that this is a community and that people become part of the fabric of this place," he said. "Especially Jerry. This is his route."

Hoffmann is not the only Cummings Center employee that Westra and Corio have immortalized. On their bathroom door is a mural featuring their leasing agent, Justin D'Aveda. There are other contenders, they said, but for now they want to keep the focus on Jerry.

"Jerry's special," they said. "We don't want to start mass-producing people."

As for the portrait, while it is technically Hoffmann's property, it's up to Corio and Westra what they want to do with it next. They have plenty of ideas.

"We want to do a 'Where's Jerry?' Like 'Where's Waldo?'" Westra said. "Within the Cummings Center, we'll put him in the coffee shop and have a little contest. Where in the world is Jerry?"