Lost in Temptation: hobnobs, puddings and egg drops

Has Tofu visited the UK lately? Or perhaps he has been to a commonwealth country.  That's the only place that you'd find a 'Ministry of Hobnobs', a 'Pudding Museum' or a 'Hotel Eggdrop'. Let's hope the earthquake that we're all learning about hasn't affected these venerable structures! Not meaning any offence… perhaps we should all take a tea break.  Thank you Tofu.

Low tech Tofu meets HIgh tech Ledger

Tofu's palette and my palette mesh and the same sorts of things that interest Tofu, interest me.  I love the way he has focused me on the the computer stamp. I missed it the first time around. 

I think people need a certain amount of low tech to feel fulfilled.  I certainly do. Now if only there was a little more time to execute all these long-winded ideas. Thank you Tofu. I love the way your stamps speak of connections and Ipromise to connect in the post soon.

REconstructed Landscape

Again, I think Tofu and I think alike in that I reckon he keeps leftovers, probably more leftovers than he needs, just in case.  But it is so satisfying when a leftover is reborn, like this one of Tofu's is. In rural Suffolk the fields are in the variations of a green theme.  There are cirlces in the grass all over where mushrooms grow, leaving deeper green rings.  That's probably too literal but certainly what I see is an aerial view, Tofu convinces me of nature at work and reminds me that whether you are in the Bay area or deep Suffolk we all speak the same natural language.

I will be hanging this at my own personal mail art show in my studio over Suffolk Open Studios.
Many thanks, Tofu!

Among Tofu's many talents, he is a plein air painter. And like me, painting is a form of solace for him, not so much a tool for protest. Politics is distracting and feels like a world with the volume turned way up, at the moment. I must admit to giving into the rage and the desperation, and am not as focused as Tofu, I guess.  Still I admire the way he is foing into the woods to sample the colour and describe what he sees and then… to send them out to people like me! 

Take a Hike - ATC - Series Muir Woods National Monument

When I lived in the Bay Area, 30 something years ago, I travelled to Muir Woods and this image of Tofu's evokes the spirit of the space!  Thank you Tofu for helping me to time travel!

Take a Hike - ATC - Series Tennessee Valley GGNRA

Tofu's quality of light is fabulous!  I love this project and I want to make some ATCs of england to send back!

B Sides

Huge thanks, as ever, Tofu!

Forests in urban paint - Tofu St John

These two cards and art to hide in a book arrived from Tofu in the early new year. Twenty years of paintbrushes and Haight Forest share a vertical theme, in keeping with Tofu's cut ups that I have received (with enthusiasm) in the past. Both of these are comments on time and how we travel through it. 

But I have to admit to adoring his painted brushes on the card to hide in a book even more… Only someone who loves to paint could create such sympathetic, life-like creatures.  Brushes are like pets.

Thank you Tofu for making me smile and smell the turps!

Tofu's other dimension

Tofu's surfaces with their braille of colour and shape are haptic delights.  What I notice about this series is that Tofu has stepped away from the linear to make something more organic.  We are not in Manhattan with its graph of streets but elsewhere, somewhere west coast.  I think of Diebenkorn and his foray into the air, or Lanyon.   What Tofu looks down on is made of clay, can we see the California drought? These roads meander and and buildings have gardens.  

I'm a huge fan of Tofu's and this one makes me want to get out in a glider to look down, myself.

Sunny-side or snowlight New Year? Tofu St John

Delighted to get New Years' greetings form Tofu in San Francisco. I suspect neither ofus had a white Christmas but I'm hoping for a little snowlight later this month! 

This little beauty is postage stamp size.

I prefer mine sunny side up. This laminated card comes from a session at a museum (see below on B-sides)

B-sides