49 Years of Progress erased.

Adam's personalised stamps are a thing of beauty with a solid message.  In this case he helps us to look carefully at the butterflys and to protect them. IMHO, creating a thing of beauty is a way to get people to take notice and hopefully change behaviour. In this case, perhaps progress isn't necessarily good! 

Moving on to stickers, I am struck by their anger at the state of the justice department. Again, the images are compelling. They help me to feel the depressing truth about one branch of the Govt.

The booklet describes Adam's journey with collaborators and singularly in the mail art (rubber stamps) world. LOOK CAREFULLY at the beautiful work.

 

Giant Whirlpool of the Mail Art Wave

For quite a few years I have been faithfully blogging wonderful mail art I receive.  I made lots of mail art too. Sometimes when I get a pile of mail art and don't manage to blog it for a little while, I can feel as if I am being swept away in a mail art wave. I think this is a positive idea, though.

Unknow artist
reproduction Sticker Dude

design: theo nelson
text: The Sticker Dude

Notice the stickers and stamps! Wonderful!

Stickers and stamps on back of envelope

Thank you Sticker Dude. peace!

~Gi

 

United Eternal Network

There is joy, honesty, facts, aesthetics and collaboration in a Sticker Dude mailing. Mail art is, after all, an exchange. Sometimes Sticker Dude sends me work for the archives and I am always so grateful. He culls work that tells a story, or that enhances his story and I feel as if I am getting the cream at the top of the bottle of milk in Mail art. Look at the stamps on the envelope. Beauty, chemistry, a polymath, commentary 'out of bounds' and stickers produced by Joel but conceived by others.  In this mailing: William Mellott, Sebela Bana and Adam Roussopoulos. What more could you want?

William Mellott/art direction Sticker Dude

Sebela Bana /art direction Sticker Dude and Adam Roussopoulos

Design William Mellott and Sticker Dude

Sticker Dude & Adam Roussopoulos

This is actually hot pink.

True story from Carol Stetser 1991

Images documenting Carol's relationship to the mail art network.

Save Mailart, Save the World

Thanks Joel, if this doesn't get me making mail art, nothing will!

 

Are you Kind?

One of the things I regret, regularly, is how I don't answer emails, or post swiftly.  When I was in the Kerio Valley, hanging at the post office waiting for news from abroad, I had already composed a version of my reply as I walked home from the PO. Then in the evenings, after I marked students' work, I would paint the envelopes and put the words int he right order on paper. These days I respond in my head but it takes days, weeks, sometimes even months to reply and by then the chimera of news has shifted and my 'reply' seems irrelevant. Life is just faster.

I'm not sure when Sticker Dude sent me this, but the inclusion of Guernica makes me think it was a recent mailing. My pile of mailart is topsy turvy and out of order. and LATE to respond to.

And yet, although the past two + years have been a miserable chapter, as I read the comments from the Idaho doctor, I couldn't help thinking how our gratitude for the NHS, and Doctors worldwide is but a memory in the news of hundreds of thousands of refugees flooding through the European borders and being homed by mere citizens, responding to the humanitarian crisis.  We are doing THIS together. We have done that together.

Meanwhile, I am a somewhat lapsed mailartist, meaning to send things out but running out of time before the sun sets.  While I agree wholehearedly with Joel, that mail art is a way of looking at art and life from a different perspective and sharing art for art's sake, I can't help painting for paintings sake and that distracts from the Utopian aspect.

 Thanks Joel, so much to think about, respond to and talk to myself about.  Hopefully I will respond to you soon!