Daniel Flenley sends nature doodles

Daniel Flenley came to the pop up IUOMA 25 year Memories are Made of This exhibition.  I had a little 'workshop table' and after he'd had a look around, I encouraged him to discover the delights of making a piece of mail art.  He did, and we exhanged postal addresses. Daniel describes himself as: 'Danny Flenley, a wildlife writer based in beautiful Suffolk, UK,' in his blog: http://chipmunkkalahari.wordpress.com 

Really great to hear from Danny and delighted that I 'inspired' his creativity. Danny asks when I will have a new mail art call… there will be an exhibition this summer in Maine, maybe we should have a nature theme?

Four more books for Rebecca's re-education

I don't often put posts on more than one of my blogs, but I want to share this with more some of the people who may not look at my other blog: http://memoriesaremadeofthismailart.blogspot.co.uk

Simon has sent me many many words over the past year. I have read every word, often more than once. I have wondered who Simon is, what the truth is, what honesty means.  He has helped me to understand that memory is even more fleeting and personal than I could ever imagine. He makes me weary about age, injustice, being a white male in post war Britain. I take what Simon says and lay it on my own version of history, a history not lived here and see that my empathy can only go a little way to understanding the experience that Simon writes about, but that is OK.  I am reading his words.  He is communicating to me and that communication is changing my view in some way that may not even be understood yet. 


I have transcribed two short passages of the 72 pages in these booklets (A5 in size) which I spent this morning reading at the breakfast table.  I have punctuated them in a way that makes sense to me.  Simon  uses no punctuation. So, Simon may not mean them the way I have read them.  They are not what Simon writes about in the bulk of his pages, but they are the passages that speak to me, today.

"This London came to me later.  I always knew it was there. Before it was a sketch; I would see those fallen through the net of civilization as far back as I remember.  I saw the underbelly of London, derelicts, the public scurrying by lowlife.  What I read, I found in London, the city I could identify in my reading. The paintings looked at were more real to me than London which I imagined.  As a painted backcloths, the figures in the paintings would detach, step out of the canvas, become autonomous.  I would meet the figures on the London streets, would come home with them on the train.  The landscapes of the paintings are the landscapes of my life.  I look at the painting, enter the worlds of the painting, follow the road as depicted past the woman on the roadway.  I leave the national museum for the walk, transported across Europe, all landscape long familiar to me.  I step from the painting into the national Museum.  The man of the staff, watching the public, saw me in the far distance of the painting; the landscape of the walk is the landscape of Tring.  I can walk on the wooded hills surrounding Tring and enter a painting in the National Museum from which I will be present in London."

"I have spent my life sending messages into inner space writing letters no one read, let alone understood.  A painter makes marks.  It is debatable who the public of these marks is.  Does the painter know what his doing?  I made marks for no one out of eternal need, as a way of messaging a city of paint.  Build your city of paint.  May your marks show the way."  

Vintage Simon Warren

Brought to England from Cranberry Island series.

Sam Hollis - Notes on an exhibition: cutting corners

Sam is a young (under twenty) mail artist who already has a strong, confident voice. This is my first piece from him and I am wowed!  Thank you Sam, this is a beauty. 

New postcards from Daniel De Culla

Not sure if Daniel intended these for the Memories are Made of This call but he didn't specifically say, so I have decided to blog them here.  Daniel's charismatic drawings are full of stories.  Wondering if there was more I should know, I journeyed to his IUOMA page where I enjoyed looking at what looks like performance art portraits.  

I did notice that Daniel likes insects and wildlife.  The New Swimming characters seem to be playing a dangerous game.  I looked up Rosemary Menniger and discovered that there was a Rosemary Menniger of note who was the adopted daughter of Karl Augustus Menninger, psychiatrist, but I have no idea if that is relevant - to me the imagery suggests dreams. 

At the Bday of Bastards I notice how dysfunctional society seems to be; but Daniel's birthday makes me smile anyway.  Thank you! 

Zlatko from Macedonia

This is my first mail from Macedonia and I think it should really be filed as a memory, but for some reason I think The Postal Ledger has more of an audience than Memories are Made of This and I wouldn't want you to miss this postcard by Zlatko.

As an aside, I need to say that Patrick has spent time in Macedonia with a Zlatko - I like coincidences like that. I don't know what the translation of Zlatko is, but I like the way the name sounds and the way it looks.

What I really like about this card is the confident and fluent way Zlatko travels between collage, illustration and painting. He creates a visual memory that conjures up an icon, for me.

I also love the way Zlatko uses his stamps. He is drawing with his stamps.  I love the way he uses pressure and line!  Thank you Zlatko, don't worry I will certainly hang this at the next Memories pop up show!

Jim SantAmour takes me to my turntable days.

Jim's card arrived Saturday.  I love a thick postcard! Hang the expense. That's the first thing I thought as I weighed Jim's card in my hand.

The next thing I notice is that those cool circles are actually a real proof sheet strip of a turntable! And Jim has me hook line and sinker! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkEeNpWMvgk Everything about this card takes me back to a particulalry fun and feckless period of my life. The KZSU record room was amazingly well-stocked and I spent as much time as I could in there listening.  One of the grad students in the art department found me fun to rib and one day he had festooned my door with a particularly fay 45. With Jim's card I am there.  I was a TA in the darkroom, and I still miss the smell of the trays as I fiddle around in photoshop.

I love the visual impact of this card.  I have this idea to match people up based on their mail art style, some of the matches may be a tangential, but there's an Art lecturer in Falmouth whose work I think you'd like. I may launch that project soon with you as my guinea pig.

And finally, 'Bad Becky'.  Sometimes you wonder if anyone really listens to the stuff you post and this is proof positive that Jim did.  Thanks so much.

 But Jim, did you mean this to be a memory?  It certainly brought them back for me!

PS And I have one more entry to the Mobma contest but I still need to take the pic.  It's definately a contender...

Simon Warren 100, 101,102 and some thoughts

I don't always know what to make of Simon's instalments.  I think that's OK. I try to reason with them sometimes and other times I come back to them. Sometimes i get letters from Simon (after I send something to him) and between the last posting and these, I got a letter.  Although I found it a bit difficult to know what Simon's words were meant to make me feel, as seems to happen they helped me to think differently.  I have sent Simon some code.  Are his instalments code?  Is he trying to break me? 

When I am perplexed I revert to what I know, looking for something beautiful to take away, a whitewash of all that disturbs me.

I took some of the words Simon has sent me over the summer, quickly, and somewhat randomly and this is what they said:

between is a gulf

whereas from the perspective

of today

are difficult to locate

does not live

in the early hours

when the day starts

many of the stories

never had

cannot go anywhere

I did not want

Box

A key

The slot

And letters

Erry less

Foreigners in time

The black of Simon's ink

The first, in this latest interrupted series - interrupted because there are missing instalments, belongs in The repository of memory thank you Simon for helping me to classify what you send.  Having said that,  I might classify #74 as memory and poetry. #83 falls into the memory catagory, but with that nebulous Simon point of view that might be a blend of truth, reality, memory, the senses or something created in the moment as the pen touches the paper.
What I notice about the ink Death series is firstly their intensity.  My particular favourite is #86.
I have a plan for my response! I feel I need to wait for the missing pieces but this is problematic as some arrived in England and were hand carried to Maine while others were placed in box 84 here on the island, and I don't know whether they are missing here or there. I will fill in the gaps as they arrive, anyway.

Simon sends SIX ink dances

These beautiful SIX arrived today! They are the usual size but I have photographed them, and added a border to print off a postcard-sized Simon compilation.  

I see figures and asemics - shadowy figures in pools of ink, fingerprinted heads hazy presence and some sort of chaotic dance.

I'm sending this Fusepo back to Simon in response.

Mailart: conversation or catalyst? Incoming and outgoing - SImon Warren

Simon is sending me imagery. 

I am sending simon imagery back.  

When we write are we hoping to shift, find our own understanding, connect or simply to see what happens?

The mail takes a long time to reach Cranberry Island... but eventually Simon's letters arrive

My mother writes that since I left, I have 'received from Simon Warren pages 29, 31,32, 33, 35 of what appears to be a journal about his life with just writing and on heavy 9x12 card stock. Each was mailed separately with stamps and amazing to think the postal people got them here in fine shape. Eileen had kept them out of the box and in a special folder with a yellow card for pick-up.' My friend the post mistress is going to wait a day or two to see if there is more and then my mum is going to put them in a package to send to me.This is the mailboat.  Mail goes on and off the island in sacks and is sorted sometime before noon, depending on the season and the boat schedule. I suspected I might have something arrive from Simon in Maine as when I returned to England I found numbers 28 and 38.    Simon's letter took me to a New Yorker cartoon (May 13th issue)  I'd read on the plane:And as you know, I've just returned from Cranberry Island where some of my year-round peers thought of Cranberry Island as Simon speaks about Tring. They called it 'The Rock'.  As a visitor, it holds delights I can find nowhere else.  It's a bit like England to me because I feel (still) like I'm visiting.  

a memory update

Carmela Rizzuto (US)

Viviana Cernjul (Argentina)

Diane Keys (US)

Erni Ilis (Brasil)

Heloisa Sonaglio (Brasil)

Pál Csaba (HUngary)

Ryosuke Cohen (Japan)

Brasil

Claudette Picance  Soares (Brasil)

Lavinia Thys

Maria Da Glória Jesus De Oliveira (Brasil)

Elisabeth Karam (Brasil)

Consuelo Margarida Rubio Debiagi (Brasil)

Am trying to avoid blogging exhaustion, but thought I would post recent memories, mostly from Brasil. I think the pieces from Brasil are from a mail art collective, Selus.  At the next pop up exhibition I'll have a table for people to dip their toe in the world of mail art.  If you want to send work in for the upcoming Suffolk exhibition at Old Barn you still have about six weeks! Please label your work with 'memories' so I know. Keep up with incoming mail art form the memories project at: http://memoriesaremadeofthismailart.blogspot.co.uk