Women in the Post

Delighted to receive this organic and lush, haptic postcard from M Becker. I love the way the yellow peaks in around the violet. The postcard speaks of time and suggests layers of it. 

Thank you!
 

Mail art Wave!

Sometimes there is a decoding process when you receive mail art. For me I look at colour, shape, the design; I try to place it historically and to understand the context. When I don't know a correspondent well sometimes I research the person and their work.  I want to get as much meaning from mail art as I can.

Here, Mikel has made it easy for me. He's used artistamps and wonderfuly textured mark making when he made my 'original'.  He's altered a postcard, adding text over the image.  He has used all the things I look for and at to decode, as I respond to it.  It's interesting and beautiful.

Mikel has included a greeting.  It is personal. And then he gives me all the context I need to understand how the words MAIL ART WAVE fit in.  Read about the Mail Art Congress Meet up with a fellow mail artist in 2022!

 

Tofu's ICD - Soy Mundo

The haptic quality of Tofu's beautiful Interdimensional Communication Device  is really special.  I have been meaning to photograph it during the day (so that you can feel the depth) but it gets to be that 'after-dinner-time' and I still haven't managed, so today I gave in a scanned it.  You can't really FEEL the braille of the piece, but I can and it's fabulous!

Tofu, as well as making art and mail art, you should be making earrings with your cutouts! 

This piece is very 1980s, for me.  I think it's because I used to wear primary colours, jeans and striped shirts before I became a punk. It works, too! I am travelling between time. Many thanks, Tofu.  Exquisite.

TREASURE from Nancy Bell Scott

On Cranberry Island there are two boxes nestled in a protected place from my first Island Mail art show.  Nancy sent a piece for it and it was really hard not to quiety slip the piece into my personal folder.  I think about that piece often.  It is the sort of thing that is so genuine and so particulalry NANCY and for some silly reason it's there, not with me.

I suppose if I were DK I could whip one off - she's mastered the art of fake NBS, but I suspect it would go the way of me trying to impersonate an accent.  I just can't be anyone other than who I am.  Having said that, when I unwrapped these three treasures from NBS, I wished for quite a long time that I were NBS then I would be able to produce such perfection!The top piece is called " Never Let the Night Pass". Never let the night pass or else?  I suspect the rust will drip down and morph letters and words into shapes that you think you might almost be able to read but find you can't…

These are the definition of haptic.  Nancy's velum-like tissue paper (I think) places have asemic letters and scratched, peeled fields.  Here layers ripple in ambiguity.

I have to admit to having no favourite.  I share her obsession. I am certain that these are obsessive pieces.  That turquoise dot isn't an accident.  The painted tape and it's music note grape seeds are considered, never laboured but exacting. The man without Rax S.

I love every inch of every one of these treasures.  Nancy tells me I can use them for whatever - whichever show.  One thing is for sure, I won't be making the silly mistake of donating this to a museum.  These treasures need to be looked at again and again by me, and then maybe, over time I will become a bit more like NBS and make something this beautiful!

Enl 2 Rott - Germany

What a beautiful aesthetic piece  I wish I knew who to thank.  If you know, please let me know…
It's haptic, asemic (because I can't read the letters or words, even though they are letters and words, I think), curious, full of time.
This is sort of mail art that makes me want to write, to tell a story, to time travel. 

Pia Brandt's haptic mail art

Pia Brandt has a distinctive style - that's lucky because it helped me to identify this unsigned piece. It has a timeless quality that I associate with women and their under garments, or maybe the sky?  What do you see in it? 

Collage Graffiti and Jay Block

Following on from Marie's blog yesterday, and art that speaks another langauge, there is something about J Block's work that says graffiti to me.  This is one of those unscientific things.  I am not trying to categorise it, it's just that in my mind I feel a link. This piece by J arrived with some pieces of the collage furling at the edges, like an abandoned billboard. Thanks J.  I love it.

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At the start of the new year I was in Edinburgh and was transfixed by wall after wall of graffiti.  Graffiti is one of those things I've grown into, which is probably backwards...

Marie's work has a very different feel, but similarly makes me think about the inherent art in graffiti. 

Haptic detritus from Pedro in Spain

The texture and subject matter of Pedro's transparent postings are fascinating. This one has great shapes too.  I even got a black hair trapped under the tape with this one. Pedro's mute sound project continues.  It is sheer laziness on my part not to contribute. I will try! Thank you Pedro.

An Asemic Poem from Marie

Now this is haptic, haptic grafitti, torn to reveal the green detail of a map, on a book that's like a building that tells a story that touches me, makes me want to go there to watch.  But there might be something voyeuristic and that makes me cautious, so I'll stand in the shadow and wait to see what happens.  
Sapois, the first word that I see.  It feels like Italian, but of course it's French.  Sapois, un petit village français, situé dans le département des Vosges et la région de Lorraine. Ses habitants sont appelés les Sapoisiens et les Sapoisiennes. But I think 'sapere,' to know, be aware of, to learn, hear. I can almost hear the sounds on the street where this book lives.  Stunning!

Dustin De Wind Does (Dis) play

So many thoughts whizzing around in my head about this piece from Dustin. But my key question is at what time on the 31st of December was  Dustin De Wind making my Display book? As I mentioned before, we were writing Drunkpo (which I still need to collate) with teenagers and other aged young adults, but glue-gunning soldiers to felt as one year 'magicked' into the next may give us some insights into the real Dustin.  And is this Drunkpo?
I am enjoying the book.

Camouflage.

I think this has some MinXus tendencies and heartliy appreciate chicken references, elastic wrapped devining fork.

Who is Ben Harris?

PINK 

Cowboys

Coal - is that a reference to the London fog?

Fab haptic trashpo book.  Thank you and I will not read it in the bath.

Visual Poetry Fragment from Cheryl Penn

 Delicious to see a Cheryl letter in my post box. Stamps all different and on right this time.

The look and sound of Cheryl's words...

The scan does not do this justice. Mysterious, like the sound of the word libretto, haptic, intricate and spontaneous at once. 

More versions, I think.

I know I like!

Thank you Cheryl, it's great to hear from you.