BG's spear-i-ous advice

BG couldn't have known that the Moss Family girls have a phobia of bulls, cows, ruminants with horns.  I may have spoken of it before but I ran with cows in Kenya, fearlessly, but here in England, cows and bulls are different.  

I'm not surprised that BG has worked all of this out, mail artists are like that, they have an uncanny way of identifying secret traits of other mail artists.   But what a funny thing for BG to have deduced about me! The image makes me feel a little queasy and to be honest I have been avoiding those states where bison roam free, just in case I happened upon one.  I will continue to avoid the wilds of the Northwest Territories...

BG seems to have doodled a bit on the pig, too. Brilliant! He is also being a devout environmentalist, sending me back the same envelope I sent him something in.  Unlike Diane, he did restamp the envelope, though!

Tijuana Tofu - Dig the altered state

Tofu's Tijuana postcard conjures up a time from my past, a time when a gaggle of undergrads went to Baja.  Jennifer had a house in Baja! I'm not sure who drove or how we navigated the hairpin turns but I do remember pitchers of beer and the way the buildings tessalated.

Tofu is a genius and I love this haptic card!

Amazingly, I found the image below this morning in a ridiculous place, before I'd even received Tofu's postcard - and it's from that Tijuana trip. 

Monkey Busisness and a TLP from DKULT Greece

Katerina sent me my first and only Year of the Monkey greeting! Our son was born in the year of the Monkey, apparently he is a water monkey.  I'm also delighted to get this collaborative TLP with participation from: Richard Canard, Katerina Nikolsou and John M Bennett!

Olfactory Trashpo from Mail Art Mutt

What a joyful collection of trashpo from Mail Art Martha! While the news spins with the risks of air fresheners, Mail Art Mutt is sniffing obliviously. 

This reminds me of one of Cleo's gatherings, with Martha's sense of humour and aesthetic. Woof, woof.

Jude is playing games with DaDa at 100

Jude's tribute to DaDa arrived in the same mail bag that Aristide 3108's did.  Fittingly, Jude has used gold and included a stamp of Emmy Henning's, Hugo Ball's wife.  Jude captures the spirit of fun they must have had performing, making art and poetry in unsettled times. 

I found Jude's game confounding… I pulled on the rubber bands, trying to get the lines and words to spin, but immediately tore the holes.  I put tape over them and tried again.  I guess I'm just not enough of a kid at heart! Or I missed the point.

I like the rhythm  of DaDa or Dada. DaDa music for the opus.

Dada centennial - Encarted by Aristide 3108

Aristde 3108 is always au courant, so it's not surprising that the latest Encarted zeros in on the Dada centennial (1916 - 2016). My understanding of the dada movement is that it was a political expression at odds with the society it existed in. The artists associated with it created 'non-art' that emmanated from a world on the brink of hardship. According to Hugo Ball, one of the artists associated with ythe DaDa movement, "art is not an end in itself... but an opportunity for the true perception and criticism of the times we live in."  

Aristide 3108 is always aesthetic but I doubt anyone would call Schwitters unaesthetic... so I love what feels to me as 1920s use of colour used on the ATC sized card inside Aristide 3108's bespoke dada wordplay envelope. And while I know I should be hearing something experimental and confrontational, I can almost hear the tinkle of a Noel Coward song (which I guess would be the antithesis of DaDa, but in a way I guess that's the point, that playful, humorous, way with imagery, words and sound that is challenging but also enjoyable and amusing.

Borderline Grafix and the Grafitti Girls

I wonder if anyone else used to try to think up names of bands during Maths' lessons?  I know that being in a band with a really wonderful name was one of my fantasies… So imagine how delighted I was when Borderline Grafix' card arrived and for a moment I forgot I am no longer a brunette with long hair and that neither my voice nor my instrumental skills ever developed to the point of Diva. 

BG probably doesn't know that where I live the Tractor Boys are big, either.

Love the energy of both sides of this collage postcard!  Very more than half way through February.

Valentines view -Yosemite Diana

Diana Hale has been to  Yosemite where she fell in love with the view and shared it with me.  I got one other valentine, apparently from Lyra, the dog. It was raining, so happy to muse on these colours as I walked.

Marie asks another per-plexing question.

The thing about marie's mail art is that it is cerebral, or at least it makes you think you should be using your brain.  When she made boekies they were simple but precise, so these radiograms do not exist without the connotation of the previous. "I read the words, "You for the people or the paper want?" and I feel as if I am cracking a code, or not cracking the code, as the case may be. I rub my head and think about Marie's research on seahorses. I am taken back to Kenya and the refusal to speak 'special english' in order to be understood. Words out of order, cut up, regrouped. I am for the people. I want my paper too, ideally before breakfast. 

And anyway, "The town was paper, but the memories were not." From Paper Towns, John Green

Eastside of Horshoe Falls - Svenja Wahl

Inside the envelope with the zine, Der KleineTierfreund, was this wonderful altered postcard from Svenja! The message is clear to me.  If you wear one of those hats you are so cool, calm and collected, you can even stroke a model eyeball in a torrent of water and vaoid getting wet! Brilliant! Many thanks, Svenja. 

Tierfreund Zine - Svenja Wahl

I selected a few of my favourite zine pages from Svenja's wonderful Project: Tierfreund, to share.  Other artists pages (including my own) have been shared elsewhere.  Artists included in these scanned pages are - Svenja Wahl, Deborah Stevenson, Carina Granlund, Susanna Lakner and Sabine Remy.  Isn't it wonderful!