New Years' Doodle Therapy!

My holiday period began when i started trying to pull our house and the studio into shape for a visit from my mother, our kids, their partners and some family who visited from NYC. I learned a long time ago that for me, the best thing to do is to down (art) tools and let go to focus all my attention on family. Trying to fit time around all the stuff I do (lots of traditions) is frustrating and disappointing so I don't try. I guess it's been at lease four weeks, but as I recall, it was more like 2 1/2 weeks before the first people arrived that i had too many jobs to do to do anything else. 

And then I got the flu on boxing day.  It wasn't the worst flu, but it was the worst thing I've had in at least twentty years. 

Lucky Pierre's post arrived while I was still preparing for the upcoming holiday season. I only opened the envelope today,  Good thing, if I'd been asked to DO ANYTHING more I woold have balked but now, it sounds possible. 

What a fun idea, but I suspect I (and my collaborators) will find a way to break the rules!  Thank you, LP. I hope to stop being remiss immediately!

Check out that octopus! 

Word from another era

The first rule of mail art is that you need to keep track of everything.  I have this amazing ledger but it hasn't been cracked open in… I pile up the work I recieve by my computer and pile up the work I blog in another pile and eventually I move it upstairs to my filing box and eventually I file it all by mail artist in a series of boxes. It shouldn't be this way but I am just always chasing my tail. 

The trouble is when I get something from a long time ago and can't remember the detail of it… (this was part of a project that I began where I scanned some other mail artists and people added to them and sent them back to me for me to make bookies with them. This began with Herman Kamphuis' wonderful drawing and collage.) I can't remember what I was thinking. Do I know who added to this? It looks like Pone to me but I could be absolutely wrong.  Let me know if you know.  Perhaps I will take up the thread of Dkult Doodle Therapy again. For the moment I will just try and catch up on my blogging!

Received Dkult mailing Garbage with a Dream!

There's poetry in the way Diane Keys mixes her text and trash. YOU are directed around, through, under and beyond.  I feel like I am in the sky, flying through veils of pastel coloured air. The wind whips up stuff and it drifts into envelopes.  Letters dance. I need this.

 'He thrusts his fists across the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.' Belatedly happy Halloween!

And Diane mailed me back my Dkult Doodle therapy sheet. That seems so 2016.  Thanks how do I make it 2019?   I submitted for the pastel society today so have a year to send mail art again!  And I will.

The Shy Doodle and More - Tic Tac

Beneath 2018, Tic Tac 28/30

 Tic Tac's graphic fingerprint is all over this mailing that I received a little while ago. I love the way she bridges cultures and creates strong, recogniseable imagery where each piece is different to but as strong as the next. 

For SALE series UNFINISHED, 2018, Tic Tac

 Unfortunately, this scan doesn't show how tactile and subtle this piece is… I feel as if I am in a car passing two people adhereing paper to a billboard. 

Love the way these letters create characters!

Evolution

Paper doll cows!  What a concept. 

And delighted to receive this DKULT Doodle Therapy page, mailed some time ago. With contributions from David Stafford, Figgy Guyver, me and Tic Tac.

Gorgeous stamps of all sorts! Thanks so much Tic Tac. One thing I realise as I get to the bottom of this blog is that Tic Tac's work needs no explanation. and whenever I type a comment it falls flat.  I guess that shows that the visual is speaking!

The Moon Rocks and Space Dust

Check out this cool envelope from David Stafford!  I don't know about you, but I think one of the best aisles in DIY stores is the one with the paint chips.  I could stand there, selecting colours, all day. Colour for the sake of colour. And then Dave goes and makes the paint squares feel like windows, I know, it's the face of a building for a rock climber? or maybe the grid of a map telling us where the space rock that is hurtling towards us is going to land?

The envelope is the house for David's doodles and the beginnings of doodles of others.  I trawled through mail art and found doodles to scan and sent them far and wide and mostly had them returned.  Diane Keys have you moved?  The elephant was one of Guido's. 

David has filled the reverse with a space story… he needed all that space (ha ha).  Beware of the space trash playing the accordion! But I'm not sure you will be happier once you land.  Those astronauts looks a little dubious…

And finally, thank you David for my office only card. It is in the pocket next to my heart as I type.

Inside, outside, doodled about, Brot Tod and Bolst - The Bennetts

Delighted to have these beautiful collaborations in a bumper mailing from the Bennetts.  A little while back I mentioned that I had some doodle pages I was sending out and the Bennetts replied to Carina. I saw and sent them two.  Two has multiplied and I have two originals plus a few pages that I assume I can include in the next DKULT Doodle Therapy.  Fabulous and thank you! 

 What the Bennets do is far more than doodle therapy.  Read these two books of visual poetry, laced with asemics and drawings, underpinned with sounds and meaning.