Armchair travelling in the time of Covid

 

If you are like me, you have spent a fair bit of time getting to know your close surroundings VERY well in the past year. Luckily, Ted Trager has sent me on some armchair travelling. I don't even need to put petrol in the car. 

The stunning black and white images piqued my curiosity.  I haven't been to any of the places in the photographs.  Have you?

Dry Tortugas National Park is in the Gulf of Mexico, west of Key West, Florida. It comprises 7 islands, plus protected coral reefs. Garden Key is home to beaches and the 19th-century Fort Jefferson. Loggerhead Key has a lighthouse and sea turtles. On nearby Loggerhead Reef, the Windjammer Wreck, the remains of an 1875 ship, is a popular dive site. Bush Key is a nesting site for seabirds like sooty terns. 

Coral Castle is an oolite limestone structure created by the Latvian-American eccentric Edward Leedskalnin. It is located in unincorporated territory of Miami-Dade County, Florida, between the cities of Homestead and Leisure City.

                                                    

Giant Rock is a large freestanding boulder in the Mojave Desert near Landers, California, and the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms. The boulder covers 5,800 square feet of ground and is seven stories high.

Desert Christ Park is a 3.5-acre sculpture garden in Yucca Valley, California. The park was sculpted and created by Antone Martin, a former aircraft worker who died in 1961 at the age of 74. 

I'm not sure who this man is but there's something about the moustache that makes me think of one of my dastardly post-truth senators. But as I have never met Ted, it could be a self-portrait, a zoom portrait ... a bit of DKULT doodle therapy.

Happy New Year to you too, Ted.

Everyone's talking about David's One Man show!

 Some people draw from life; some people draw from photos and some people draw from what's inside.  I'm not sure how David gets to his finished products but this wonderful selection of humanity oozes with character and demonstrates the ease with which David moves between and juxtaposes media. 

David sent me this quite some time ago… In fact I carried the envelope to Maine, intending to blog it from America, but that didn't happen and then when I got back my wifi it was a bit out of sorts and finally, TODAY, Patrick fixed the final wifi blip and I can actually scan and print wirelessly (for the first time in seven years!) So fully realising that for example, the Hawaian woman going up the escalator hasn't been in pre-hurricane turmoil, because time doesn't work that way, I'm sure I can see a lot of screaming in David's portraits and I suspect their hysteria is politics related, or the rats from Felixstowe have gone further afield than we thought.

Could this be John Foster and Amy Irwin?

Clearly me, getting ready for the DKult ho down. 

De Villo Sloan sandwiched between his harem - Dk with teased hair, perhaps? 

Three cheers for another brilliant envelope from David Stafford, somewhere in the West.

Asemic trashpo doodle bubble

Do I recognise that doodle? Should I open the envelope? A new form of trashpo has been bornWOW or OW. Void, void, void. I suspect this is DK's latest foray into new material! I await instructions.  Do I add to this.  Do I leave it in tact? should it bounce back like a Wilson tennis ball? Or should I just relax and enjoy it?

Thank you, whoever you are.

Update: Have just checked my IUOMA messages and see this come from Borderline Grafix! 

AZazzle ABC and Doodle - Phillip Lerche

Phillip knows I love a good doodle so he sent me an add and pass that Diane Keys began.  As a result I got this zazzle card, that reminds me of stamp carving words the wrong way around, but of course these letters are absolutely right and gesturally coloured!

I am a plastic person and Phillip is a text person but that doesn't make me any less receptive to Phillip's text! I love the samples he sent me.  I makes we want to swing in another direction…

 And thanks for the doodle!  I owe my other doodle fanatics something collaborative. Soon! 

Great stamps!

Monkey Busisness and a TLP from DKULT Greece

Katerina sent me my first and only Year of the Monkey greeting! Our son was born in the year of the Monkey, apparently he is a water monkey.  I'm also delighted to get this collaborative TLP with participation from: Richard Canard, Katerina Nikolsou and John M Bennett!

The many faces of Herman Kamphuis

Voyageur Postal has an eye for the timeless that he crafts into unique and instantly recognisable envelopes. When I have had mail art calls, Herman's envelopes always enchant me and get a prime location in the hanging.  I believe this envelope and its contents is a response to my recent adventures in doodles. 

When I doodle I find people appear more than anything else.  When I was home in America I noticed that my painted rocks are still the feature of the mantelpiece. These rocks were done in the early 70s and are women in leotards leaping over anything they can, the moon, the sea, mountains.  I have always loved to paint and rocks became my canvas one summer. I was a gymnast and I still have flying dreams where I bend my body into amazing shapes.  Sadly, my body doesn't really bend like that anymore but I have my dreams, my doodles and my rocks for vicarious contortionist pleasure.

Herman's doodles are about people too but they seem to zero in on the face, mostly. Fabulous, gestural, characters emerge!

The four pages above are a little book.  The characters certainly are dramatic.

In addition, Herman enclosed these photos of some vintage heads.

By the way, the mailing from Herman arrived in the last few days I was in England before setting off for Maine.  It was a hectic time and I forgot to bring Herman's envelope with me to blog.  So this post is out of order but thoroughly enjoyed and adored!