Celestial Banana Art!

Banana mail art 2014

Months ago I sent the Celestial Scribe some banana mail art.  A few days ago I received this! What characters!

back Banana mail art 2014

add and pass

front of envelope inside envelope

back of envelope inside envelope

Why there are two envelopes - reminder that it's a good idea to write legibly!

Front of franked envelope

Back of franked envelope

Wow this took a long time to travel from Brasil!  I make it more than two months!  Still very worth waiting for.  I love the precision, aesthetics and how considered every aspect it.  Many thanks and lets hope next year's banana mail makes it before the magnolias fall!

Another entry for MOBMA: Reservations about a Superstar

Bad romance with a irreligious twist from New Mexico.  I'm not sure if this is a bribe, a threat or simply bad mail art?  Another hilarious take on the topic and as ever various passages make me wince, which I guess is the point!  What a contender down to the purloined airline paraphenalia!

Braincell 886

Here comes the sun - sculpture from Anja

I don't often get mail art parcels, and when I do they are a treat, a surprise and a curiosity!
This piece from Anja Mattila-Tolvanen weighs lots so I was doubly curious.  It is not marked for any of my specific projects, so assume it is meant as a stand alone exchange.  

To me this piece is both a crown of screws which has particular connotations as well as a sun which has another set.  I like the ambiguity, the way it allows me to bring my own mood, context and outlook to the piece, the way the positive and the negative intermingle and sit side by side.

Once long ago when I still lived in Africa I traveled with some visiting American friends to the north of Kenya on a camping safari.  It was a low budget affair where we traveled on a bus and pitched tents by night.  In Turkana the young women were selling their exquisite fertitlity necklaces.  These were made of natural materials and festooned with beads. Although it felt a bit wrong I couldn't help but buy one. I was in love with the girls, the necklaces, Kenya, and with a man who I would later marry. The real shame was that instead of keeping it and treasuring it, looking at it for ever and ever, I gave it away.  Sadly the person I gave it to didn't understand it, and it was put out with the rubbish.  I still mourn it and feel sad that I didn't protect it, and honor the maker appropriately.  Anja's piece is like an urban fertility necklace, to me.

Anja, your piece must have been shaken a bit in transport.  I will do my best to re-glue it.  Then I will look at it and share it.  Many thanks!

Moan Lisa wants numbers and woman

Thank you for the rich beauty of all this exciting work!

Monica Rex - Los Angeles

Delighted to receive this stunning digitally altered photo from Monica!  She creates real pathos , for me. Surely this should have been an entry for the Minxus who has the best hair contest! http://minxuslynxus2.wordpress.com

From Kevin Gillen - UK

As well as this envelope I received a correspondence including an invite to contribute to an exhibit in Folkestone that Kevin takes part in.  He directed me to his facebook page: 

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Mail-Art/142690532565977

…where I found mail art! Thanks Kevin and you will be hearing from me. 

As this is black and white and Kevin offered that I could do as I wish with his mail art, I will include it in MSK!

What will Jennifer Weigel Do?

Received this fetching postcard from Jennifer Weigel.  It doesn't instruct me about which mail art call it might be intended, so I am posting it here.  I can imagine it at both with its beach ball motif and blue label, it would fit right into maritime mail art… and then again it could be muscial and is certainly colourful!  Many thanks Jennifer!

More exquisite Bad Romance entries arrive!

As I scan my way back to blogging equilibrium, I decided to start with BAD ROMANCE, the mail art call for the esteemed MOBMA (Museum of Bad Mail Art) that occurs monthly, or so. MOBMA is one of  Diane Keys' groups on IUOMA, and I am judging this month because I (cough, cough) won last month, with my BAD BURLESQUE entry.

Carina's unique sense of humour had me reaching for google translate: 

'Drama, action shock this is great' is the English translation of the Swedish clipping on the top left. Carina has a way of using her clippings to add tension to her pieces.

As far as I'm concerned, Carina's right on all counts… a chocolate fondue is bound to break up any relationship.  NO ONE could possibly look good with warm c dripping from the corner of their lips andif someone took me out for somecstuffed chicken that looked like a Shakespeare tragedy, I would be off too.   All in all a recipe for bad romance without a doubt.  But a potentialy winning entry in terms of the competition!  Love the macabre flavour of this entry!

Vizma's envelope is a cracker! She goes to the crux of the problem with this call on the front of the envelope... Do we mean bad sex, bad candle lit dinner for two, bad underwear? Whatever there is something Eurovision winner about this entry!

I've never met Viz in person but I love her mail art persona.   I love the way she clobbers you over the head with reasons why she is the best.  She's got that competitive edge that so many other fuzzy mail artists lack.

The way Vizma masters writing and imagery with such panache never ceases to amaze me - the way she collages words and images so seemlessly to hit the target. Viz has taken all our dreams of romance and laid them bare, Grantwood, kitten, and disease in a lovely package.

Apparently fake (photocopied) stamps made by Mean Sheena

This wonderfully distorted creature comes with her own line, 'She'll suck you up and spit you out.' The line sounded familiar so I googled it.   This is what I found.  but I still think there is something else. 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dVIfObZy9Q

A great contender from Vizma too. (cliché alert) Deciding will be difficult! Still time to enter… make this even more difficult!

[Diary of a Pebble]] by Marie Wintzer

 Marie always sends me magic.  She has a way of taking unassuming elements and creating something extraordinary with them.  The Diary of a Pebble is a book made from something unfamiliar and yet it feels like something that was common once... something to hold photos, a doctor's notebook.  I really have no idea what it is, but I have a feeling down some street, a street like the ones Marie photographs, you might find a stationary store - not one with all that FANCY stationary that they send to Singapore, or London, the other kind with a shelf and a pile of these stacked waiting for an elderly customer to come in...

 I noticed on IUOMA that Dean has received one too.  Here is a link to his and what he said:
http://iuoma-network.ning.com/profiles/blogs/marie-wintzer-s-birthday-today-and-the-diary-of-a-pebble

 I don't know if you like to vacuum, but I absolutely hate it, so when Marie's poem begins, 'one of those Dysons', I am there full of opinion, empathy, stories, memories.  It's a great first line!  The title evokes a poem by Simon Armitage, for me too:
http://simonarmitage.typepad.com/homepage/2005/11/ten_pence_story.html 

Pieces of stories, (drowned out by the vacuum?) come in and out of view.  The feel of the pages, the sharps held in their protective sleeves, the blood, the raspiness of turning the pages, remind me that LIFE (especially for a pebble) is frought.

 As always, the sound of the words, and especially here, the way Marie uses space, the visual poetry stuff, underscores it all so beautifully.

 I received this book before I went to America.  Although I had photographed it, I realised i couldn't write about it without holding it and although I considered taking it, I left it behind.  One of the first things I did when I got back was to unwrap it from its envelope to read it again and over again.  It is much of what I like about poetry.  I feel as if I can relate.  It moves me, the words and images are beautiful to look at and say aloud.  But I know that my reading is my reading and I suspect when I come back to it again I will see more and other! And I wonder what the writer really meant... Thank you Marie!  It's a gem.

Be sure to visit Marie's site too!
http://thebookwormslunch.com