Jodi Ellis &
Marcia Muth

NEVER TOO LATE TO DO WHAT YOU LOVE

Honored June, 2006

Jodi Ellis & Marcia Muth

"Marcia and Jody have shown me that it's never too late to do what you love," said one of many letters supporting this remarkable pair. Nor was there any shortage of examples to underline the point.

"At a chamber music concert, a violin solo moved me so deeply that I decided to take up a string instrument," one nominator wrote. "So I got a list of cello teachers and called Jody Ellis. 'I am 48 and have never played before,' I explained--'at which she laughed and said, "'I started when I was 59! Come on over, and don't worry!'''"

In the year 2000, when Marcia Muth was 81, she began painting full time. Now her work appears in museums and galleries from New York to Albuquerque to St. Louis to Cape Cod to Beaumont, Texas. She also is a much-published poet, a noted librarian, and, with Ellis, co-founder of a literary journal and publishing house.

Never in their half-century in Santa Fe has either slowed down. Formerly a nurse and a candy-shop owner, Jody in 1969 teamed with Marcia to start Ellis Research Associates, which assisted aspiring writers. Within two years the quarterly literary magazine Sunstone Review followed, and then grew into the Sunstone Press. The founders sold the enterprise in 1977, and kept moving on.