Belated Birthday Greetings - Jane Lewis

I am so lucky to have received this beautiful card, about 5 1/2 x 5 1/2 from Jan Lewis a day or two after my birthday. To me it feels like rounding a bend on a drizzly Scottish day, a few years ago. I love the way Jane can fix time and create motion at once. I'd wait a long time for this!  Many thanks.

Love and holding hands - Katy Kehoe

So, quite often we spend the holidays with Katy Kehoe and her wonderful family. Sadly, this year we were in Suffolk while they were in San Fran. This beautiful card, clearly made with love, is a window onto the joy and silly times we've had together in years gone by. The logistics are so difficult... but we sure hope we can organise things to gather everyone together again for a Landmark holiday in 2016. We missed the gang and treasure those days.

Sunny-side or snowlight New Year? Tofu St John

Delighted to get New Years' greetings form Tofu in San Francisco. I suspect neither ofus had a white Christmas but I'm hoping for a little snowlight later this month! 

This little beauty is postage stamp size.

I prefer mine sunny side up. This laminated card comes from a session at a museum (see below on B-sides)

B-sides

Galactic winter Banana - Linda French

I can't figure out how Linda made this beautifully executed, haptic, COSMICALLY STUNNING banana! It is just out of this world! There are HOLES (some, but not all of the white circles are holes); it is collaged, so if you run your hand over it you feel the topography of THE MOON.  It has words and arrows and marks that surprise me. It has sunburnt edges.  It is just spectacular! If I'd opened it earlier it would have hung on my Christmas tree in its ornate, ornamental winter moon, galactic splendor.

5089 Anging Folders - Matt Stolte

Years ago at IUOMA there were discussions about whether to analyse mail art or whether to let the work speak for itself.  It turns out I (shamelessly) like a story.  I see narrative even where it doesn't exist.  I suspect my narrative is simplistic because I don't remember things for long and can't alude to much, but with Matt's mail art I saw something immediately . What I see is a cosmonaut bound for space and some exquisite planet, possibly made of green cheese.  Matt's gorgeous turquoise mixed media piece is made on the back of a rapidly cut cardboard castoff - a trashpoem, for sure.

 Note the 5089 stamps

 and a C Mehrl Bennet stamp

 I suspect below is recycled trash from trashqueen DK, of DKult fame. I have the next few lines in a carefully filed envelope.

 And finally a John M Bennett Nostril stamp! Perhaps the top image is phallic after all?

Dave the Rave and his stickerdoodle heart from Paris

This arrived today (so is out of order in terms of arrival to Nayland Farm) but I wanted to post it tonight as it may be the topic of conversation on a long drive down to the Southeast tomorrow, for some.

I had no idea who this was from… so the hint, 'Dave the Rave' was quite important; although if I'd considered, briefly, I might have remembered that one Dave the Rave was in Paris (with Lesley) so it was sort of obvious.  

I love the use of Le Tricolore colour in these stickerdoodles. Madame Parisienne  seems immune to the floral display that lights up the evening sky. 

 The clouds shift and become piratical.

 The women seem impervious to the commotion.

 A tower is tipped and the spectre looks quizzically on the tourists.

Inspite of various hold ups,  lost carnets, locked luggage, a petrol-less moped… the post takes flight over the channel. 

All of France looks on, full of hope and ardour.

Immune to terror plots, low fuel prices and even over-trekked destinations, the letter sails away.

And I unhinge the flap, sniff, sniff to find that it all worked out and everyone had  joyeuse fetes.

Artist in Seine puts a fizz in the January drizzle

While I consider myself a proficient multi-tasker, when it comes to being home with family, I try to pour all my energy into being with them and all the work that goes along with their visits. I pretty much stop all creative endeavours. So it took considerable discipline not to open my mail art until now.  I didn't get scads because I have been something of a 'missing mail artist' for months, but what I did get looks fabulous, so I will be opening it, and blogging it when I get a moment between the after-christmas jobs, as the family depart over the next few days.  

But this is about DEAN and the cheer he sent me and how it's cheering me up as I lug the champagne bottles to the bottle bank and sigh.

It's truly amazing that Dean, having never been to Nayland Farm, knows how we celebrate, the toasts, the cakes, the candles, the decorations - it's uncanny. The only way we differ from the oppulent lifestyle that Dean depicts is that Dean's world looks so orderly… Now where did we put the extra wine glasses? 'The timer's going off, whose timing something?' WE need another chair…

We have an annual gathering a few days after Christmas (because I never know what else to do with my birthday) and I have to admit to downright pandemonium as the first guests arrived. We don't have chandeliers either.  

Dean's card folds open to the two page spread below.  It is made of heavy card and looks to be a repurposed piece. I recognise the spent sticker page from years gone by and again it makes a wonderfully festive impression! 

Dean's firework display, (complete with Christmas full moon) is also similar to what we had around here in Battisford Tye. Huge thanks to the Artist In Seine for spreading the festive spirit into January. I will eat a few black-eyed peas for him so it's a lucky 2016 and get my mail art ledger out to decide which of the many, many international mail artists I owe mail to will be first on my list!