Essence vs substance

In early summer I signed up to take part in Amalgamated confusion's Exquisite Corpse project. These things take a long time and these two pieces above and below were Keith's stop-gap mailings before he gathered everyone's pages and put the whole beautiful thing together.  I hope to blog THAT in a few days. It arrived a few weeks ago and I was agog!

On a completely different topic, while running this morning, I figured out that mail art is what I do when I have time.  It's my pleasure, not that work: painting, isn't, or that I don't love to garden and even cook but I can rationalise all that as 'work'.  Mail art if my frivolity, although it isn't. It is playful but play is essential. I was thinking about that because I was trying to figure out why I never have time for it and Patrick has time to rebuild a car.  I couldn't answer that, but I realise I need to make time again for this pleasure.

Many thanks for all this beautiful stuff to whet my imagination and to help me play! and who knew there is a mail art day? Everyday should be mail art day!  Beautiful work, as ever.

 

A taxomonomy of Une Vie

 

Herman's mail art is bold and beautiful like a trip to the cinema. Those things that happen on a day, in your life, those things that I used to write as a list when I lived in the Kerio Valley (so I would have something to say in my daily letters), those things that might feel inconsequential, a fox, a bird, a tooth, become actors in the story which Herman gathers together in snippets for me to reconstruct. This time I fell joy and wonder, like awakening from a dream, a world where we are maskless, hugging, in cramped spaces.

When I received this I had some friends staying and they wanted to see what it was.  I opened the outer envelope but when I saw the delicate string i exclaimed that I needed to open it later, carefully. Herman had never tied up his mail art in string! A delicate and beautiful touch!

At the moment the fierce heat has abated and I only need to water the polytunnel once a day, but I am this woman. She is one of Herman's photographs of what I imagine is mail art he has sent to others. His panache with juxtaposing the figure with colour and form is always enchanting and i am happy to be a voyeur in these three pieces of sent mail!

Herman tells me that in Amsterdam they have jettisoned their masks.  Here in England we are still more cautious. On the flip side of this icon,  Herman tells me of his father and the letters he wrote and how they make him proud. I was the letter-writer in my family but I treasure the few things I got from my own father. His handwriting can still conjure the man. 

Happy belated birthday, Charlotte!

This is larger than Herman's usual drawing scale and they flap in the wind. I need to make more stamps!  Thank you for a wonderful mailing, as always. I will try not to be a snail in the speed with which I reply!

Telepathic Empathic Mail Art

It's really great to get mail art from Debra and to find out that she is a fan of my fused plastic collages! and what's even better is she enough of a fan to send me some wonderful stuff in a her bespoke 'far out' envelope. 

The first thing is an envelope boekie, made by Dan Buck and embellished by Debra. The last time someone sent me a collaborative book that I wasn't expected to add to and send back was Guido. So it's a special thing. Although maybe the empty page is for me to add to and send back to Ed? I tend to archive everything, meaning to send on add and pass things and somehow too much time passes and then they go up to my archive. But if I should continue this, just say.

And as for Debra's 'sign'.  I love that Debra saw my name and thought of me! 

I have been working on some fused plastic on and off for a few weeks.  I am hanging a lot of my plastic and books at a show in Colchester in August. Everything (well a lot of my fused plastic) always (… or even sometimes) begins as mail art and then I realise it's something that I am working through so can't send it out YET. That's what's happening now. You can see what I'm taking about just below the back of Debra's envelope. After  made Looming Lights, a book I took apart and then reassembled so i coul sew plastic into it, I deconstructed a dictionary with the intention of mailing out all the pages.  I worked in a flurry of activity and then couldn't send them…YET. That doesn't mean Debra won't get her fused plastic. It just means it might take a little while.

Huge thanks Debra! Love it all.

Three cheers for Ticket! Ticket!

Some mail artists go crazy and create mammoth projects that require endless hours collating, creating, photographing, scanning, making!  Cascadia Artpost is one of those kinds of mail artists! This mailing is a stuffed envelope of collaborative stamps.  Cascadia asked for our tickets and ephemera and then he turned it all into stamps. For example, that red one on the front of the envelope is one of my tickets… from the Stowmarket beer festival, 2007.  I keep way too much stuff from life so was REALLY happy to send some of it away! I wonder whether that was the beer festival ticket from the time we took our eldest with some of his friends for their first taste of legal alcohol? Whatever, it was lots bigger and now it is immortalised. 

Go through these stamps carefully.  Get your magnifying glasses out and get a feel for what your mail artist friends do with their spare time!  Wow, so excited about this! THANK YOU Jack and happy birthday!

On Spy Track (collab boekie) Amy Irwen and Rebecca Guyver

It feels a little funny blogging my own work here at the Postal Ledger… but Amy Irwen has taken my Spy Notebook and 'used' it in a way that adds depth, humour, additional meaning and aesthetic pizazz, so I guess it's OK! 

I'm guessing Amy has used a local paper to find some of the words that allude to following, watching, note-taking about life from the point of view of the spy.  The gobblydygoop, nonsense phrases suggest the incomprehensible that 'spy language' must be.  Trashpo ephemera makes it all even better!

The idea for the Spy Notebook was in response to Alexander Limarev's mail art call: SPY, an inspiring and apt concept for 2014-2015!

Thanks so much Amy!  I'm not sure I know how you parted with it!