Giant Whirlpool of the Mail Art Wave

For quite a few years I have been faithfully blogging wonderful mail art I receive.  I made lots of mail art too. Sometimes when I get a pile of mail art and don't manage to blog it for a little while, I can feel as if I am being swept away in a mail art wave. I think this is a positive idea, though.

Unknow artist
reproduction Sticker Dude

design: theo nelson
text: The Sticker Dude

Notice the stickers and stamps! Wonderful!

Stickers and stamps on back of envelope

Thank you Sticker Dude. peace!

~Gi

 

Honesty implies an Audience.

As we fill our envelopes, make our artistamps, select our postage stamps, imagine the opening and the response, we are performing for our audience. And, according to the sticker dude clipping service and Sarah Viren, (below) in particular, we are being responsible creative non-fiction writers, of a sort.

Sticker dude has enclosed a host of prompts for the mail art world to select from, re-use, afix, delight in; and in this mailing he also offers opportunities forus to gather material that may help me/us to tell our stories. Look at those artistamps, those stickers - the collaborative imagery we can make!

When I used to go into schools to work with little kids, making books, one of my favourite activites was making envelopes and letting them make and choose images that they could use to tell their own stories.  They would pick images out, arrange them and create a narrative. Joel is sending us that kind of valuable stuff so we can tell bigger, bolder stories and learn from him through the stories he tells.

Great mailing!  It is a tough old world that we co-exist in, but luckily Joel is one of my correspondents! Contact him, get some stamps and stickers and be empowered to create, protest and change things!

A3 collage by Carol Stetser with images from the Eternal Network, reproduced by the Ssticker Dude, 2021

stamps: Cracker jack Kid, Piermaro Ciani and the Sticker Dude

 

Enraged and with voice

Joel makes mail art with a message. He collaborates with a number of other artists and is fastidious about crediting them.  He is a thoughtful, enthusiastic correspondent. He is generous in nature and unwilling to stay silent in the face of injustice or 'bad politics'. 

I have said before that Joel cajoles and juxtaposes humor with his message. This is evident from receipt of Joel's envelope. ' The social responsibility of the artist is to survive and nibble away at societu's thick hide with love and sharp teeth. - Harley'. show the heroes: Harriet Tubman, sitting Bull… paddle through the rising sea levels hold women in high esteem, covid skeletons with no sense of what we are living through- Hope and doom, side by side.

In England we aren't singing.  They think singing spreads Covid 19. But if you were really keen, you could laminate Joel's song and put it in the shower to sing there.  It is a bit of a sad sing, though.  But it is a sad time. 

My nephew is heading back to Eugene Oregon in a few days and this aunt is worried for him. We lived through the 'haze' in Singapore from the burning forests in Kalimantan.  It is awful and there were no protests, no police shootings, no pandemic. 

The first time I heard this was on The Last Word (Lawrence O'Donnell) then I read it in the New York Times. It is the sort of writing we all need to read again and again. And then, do some thing to address it.

YUM!

√√ √ I agree.

I loved the tone of the enraged mail artist.  Her conviction is apparent and she is never strident.  Although, strident would be fine. It is shocking when a correspondent isn't empathic. The majority of my correspondents have been thoughtful and empathic, fortunately. When I have receieved mail art that feels inappropriate I have kept it and filed it but I have not enjoyed it. I have edited out pieces that miss the target audience in a mail art exhibition. I appreciate Joel's 'need' to halt the practice of sharing imagery that is not thoughtful, empathic and appropriate and may go to my file and return it to the sender. 

A Corona Beach Ball

Joel Cohen's stamp exploring civilisation is the perfect way in to a sticker dude mailing. But then again, so is mail art flees reality to gain reality, another stamp on this envelope. In these mad times Joel is doing what I do, making things in order to understand, forget and share.

I like a mail artist who helps me to understand his point of view andplace in the world we co-exist in. Joel's routine isn't far from my routine except I live in the country, have a big mad garden to tame and I am the designated grocery shopper in our family. I go to bed so tired there is no time to recognise how different life is.

Great to get the New Yorker - Sticker Dude clipping service!  I subscribe to the New Yorker (online) but miss so much. Let's hope the president doesn't manage to delete the post office before he is ousted. In the UK the mail got slower and then the post office got sued because a first class letter needs to arrive the following day and they weren't!

Amazing the way a piece of cut and torn paper can make me feel cut off, alone… what an alienating time this is. Great ATC 

On the morning of Mueller's opinion (FACT) piece in the Washington Post, after Stone's commutation, and now apparently Trump is trying to discredit Fauci, I can't help wonder what kind of a TWILIGHT Zone this is! sheez.

Thanks for the advice!  I have zoomed in lots of different contexts and so far I love the additional tool in my tool chest.  I can 'go' to pilates. 'take' a life drawing class and see my friends from other lives. when I was in the Peace Corps i was just cut off.  This is better, for me.

So many great ideas to think about in this mailing! Thak you Joel!