Hairstyles and Dandelions in Manderley

As a Rebecca, I bask in the characters who share my name.  When I was a kid I was Rebecca of Sunnybrook (farm). Herman has found an iconic Rebecca in this mailing. I don't really look good in brown but I love the style of turn of century Rebecca. As for hats, I LOVE them.

This collage of shapes is also a collage of words, poetry. Read the first line of Rebecca aloud…. it sounds even more magical in french! And Herman summons a corner of Matisse's studio and his big scissors in the way he assembles his shapes.  

As is customary, Herman places an envelope within an envelope, nesting his imagery.  When Herman layesr character over character he develops his stories. This Rebecca was once a child. She has watched children, delighting in them delighting in nature.  Iconic Rebecca gets some nuance, we are all more similar than you might think.

Herman's collages are also a mixture of what is 'real' and what we expect.  The Herman adds a patina of experience.  The sculptures become more unique but also deeper and more universal with the addition of scraps of patterned paper.

Perhaps i am reading something into this, but do you get the feeling that Herman's ink drawing feels trapped, perhaps in a Covid lockdown?

I don't often include notes, but Herman's handwriting is so beautiful I can't resist.  I also enjoy the marks of colour, not to mention the very kind words! 

As ever, Herman's mail art is always a little more beautiful than it translates in scanning. Each collage portaits fells great to hold and i am lost in the texture and pattern.  Thank you, Herman.

 

Quasi una Fantasia - Herman Kamphuis

I'm not sure where my original postal ledger has been put for safe keeping… but I know that I have been trading with Voyageur Postal since at least 2012.  He is very sweet and sends me something special at the start of a new year. this mail has been sitting by my computer for about a week and Ionly just opened it before I scanned it. 

Each time I get mail from Herman , my first impression is that it feels European. Herman works with a particular palette that is like the tubes of paint or the pigments you'd find in a fine art dealer - no imitaion, no fluorescents, terra verte, red oxide, naples yellow.  a refined palette.

Another thing you might not be able to sense is that the papers are different weights, haptic, tactile, and perfectly glued. Herman selects imagery so that we are party to new conversations. He tells stories that never existed but suddenly do.

Herman's mail is like a safety deposit box (see below) full of precious personal items. Similar to a Russian doll, Herman nests imagery and layers it in an exquisite way.

Herman likes to compare and contrast beauty with more awkward motifs. I love his doodles.

I love the enhanced decay  of this piece. 

Herman's mail is like a good book, a beautiful song or a piece of sculpture that weathers beautifully.

 Thanks Herman, Happy New Year, and see you in the post.

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!

Sensations - Extremes coexist

Extrovert, introvert or 'enorm', Herman has a way of reflecting the world back through the characters he choses  that tell stories that might exist.  As I have thought about my own work, I have realised that this is what I care about too, telling stories that may be true or may be invented but that we can believe. 

While this green-gloved beauty might be a well-known face, she conjures up Anna Karenina on the cusp of attracting Vronsky for me. A good book is worth a thousand images and vica versa. The man with the 'eye patch' has pathos too.  From whom is his postcard relic and is he writing to her? and if so, 'is she really going out with him?' and if so, he must have done something remarkable.  These images are the inside images of collaged card that stands 24 cm.  Below is Elisabeth Bas.  Perhaps this is her story?

Age has left its imprint on the memory, scratching the marbled paper removing the colour from the painted walls.

Marker Meisje … (from Marken?) stands by the canal and possibly the sea. In the juxtaposition we seem to learn about her, a small town girl with dreams to travel to Amsterdam or perhaps a child participant in the resistance? 

I usually paraphrase what Herman writes to me but I enclose this to show you his wonderful handwriting.

Herman and I have been exchanging for quite a few years now and ss I have got to know him (in the mail), I have learned a bit about his life. The title from this blog comes from the English translation of 'Prinkkels' at Museum Dr. Guislain Gent http://www.museumdrguislain.be/en where Herman's mail art and drawings are on permanent display! I am not surprised… Herman's drawings have been the starting point of plenty of mail art collaborations and they make up some of my treasured mail art.

Like so many mail artists (and artists) we have an abundance of artistic impulse and I satisfy this by working compulsively, gathering material and using it to make the next thing. I suspect that Herman does too.  Thank you for the beautiful work (as ever), Herman, and for a little chink of time to ponder the dichotomy of extremes.

What are the Trials and Glories of Tractor Driving?

Having been in the garden for 2 1/2 of the past three days, I know what agricultural work is like.  The boy on the envelope I received from Herman Kamphuis is not yet jaded sitting atop his tractor. But let me tell you… caloused hands and feet, sweaty underarms, vermin and living out in the boondocks has its drawbacks.

In Kenya I didn't teach Home Science but Agriculture instead. We didn't have a subject called 'home Science' where I went to school but I reckon it's about bathing properly and how to cook a cake. I certainly needed to bathe well today after spreading manure on the transplanted plants.  Herman's delightful altered cover is the sort of thing any up and coming home scientist would likely emulate. Rub-a-dub-dub.

According to the back of this, this is Herman 'fluting'. We could use Herman and his flute here… one of the things about living on a small holding is that you are always battling vermin.  Today Patrick was prising open roof spaces to see if he could find the source of the scuffling and deal with it so Figgy will be able to sleep when she returns for Easter. I'm sure among Herman's many talents he would lead the rats out with his trusty flute.

As ever, so many ridiculous pointless jobs to do that you're better off making it all up. Fabulous doodles!

This postcard from the past has a wonderful spontaneity and cptures perfectly what it's like to live in a hamlet… I appreciate the sentiments too. 

 Meanwhile this postcard has a lot of things wrong with it.  You don't make peach jam with your feet… that's only for grapes. And Health and Safety would have a picnic with you if you mixed food with bunions! You are absolutely spot on young man.  It is a WOW. 

All those wonders were nestled in a folding envelope.  Do you dream in colour? Do you see pictures in your mind's eye? Are you a peacock?

Many thanks Herman!  It was a super mailing!