16th Century George 2nd BLOCKED at the river

Jay Block has created a tapestry of trashpo that is shockingly close to a series of drawings I have been making since the start of the year... but I suspect that it's just incidental that his torn paper scraps and found poetry look like necklaces and textiles. Even the colours sing in a way that reminds me of what I choose when I reach for colour. I am 'ntranced 'by his historic allusions too, George 1st , George 2nd, King George. But what I really love, maybe most, is the way Jay Block was blocked.  AND his islands, reminiscent of Christo's islands take me to Manhattan. Lets  take the 59th street bridge across the river!

Leeward Islands of Curvy Hips

Mars's landscape of undergarments and smoke ring snapshots are full of teenage angst and contradictions as well as aesthetic.  I also get a feeling that they are a kind of code, or at least capable of subliminal messaging.  Why do brassieres and girdles make me want to climb a mountain, perhaps its the sundown stamp.  For me the sublime contradiction of hemming in a body and blowing smoke rings with a mop of wonderful untamed hair, at a jaunty angle, fits perfectly.

Thank you, Mars!

Red Smoke in The Classroom, David Stafford

David has been summoning the spirits in DKult style and these smoky red asemics are drifting down the hallways of classrooms we've inhabited in days of yore. Of course, H is for Hallway! Or maybe it's Happy Birthday? David is painting the town red for his mother's big big big birthday!

Read on to learn that David has been repurposing dressmaker's carbon paper into spectral landscapes, another kind of stichery postal! GORGEOUSLY haptic.

I wished David's mum Happy Birthday - 100! I hope she'll give me her address so I can make something celebratory to send her way. 

Sporty Floral in his Muguet des Bois

Herman made me laugh a lot with this wonderful composition! Choosing a title was fun too. I adore that pendulous earring.  I'd love to see the whole which the parts came from! In real life I'm sure I would have liked this binary fellow, can I say that?

Herman is responding to mail art that was made from a failed life drawing. He seems to be playing with this in his reply.

Inside of the above envelope/folder I found this triptych. the back is painted black with ink. On the front,  Herman has attached some of his characteristic large doodle people.  Each page of the tryptch is 4 x 6".

Herman has also included a scan of something from the past which he knows will delight me! 

Love the teeth and the expressive faces! 

Huge thanks for Herman, again! This package will no doubt inspire something! and I can't wait to see what it will be.

Moonscape from Bandon-By-The-Sea

Great to get this timely mail art from Dorothea Tortilla!  I heard on the radio today that there will be a total eclipse of the moon on the 15th-16th of May. There were all sorts of warnings about damaging our eyes, so I think I'll just look at Dorothea's image instead! Can anyone really see the eclipse with a pinhole thingy away?  Our son is part of a small but keen astronomy club: three other med students, I think, who wanted to spend some of their student loan one weekend. They tell me they are successful at ricocheting light.

I love Dorothea's stamps too. It looks like fun in Bandon-By-The-Sea, kicked back, not pilates, I think.  Here in Suffolk it seems like all we do is work. 

I'm off to America for my annual garden duty on Monday.  That is usually a good time to catch up on my mail art in the evenings.  I'll try to reply soon, Dorothea, and thank you.

Every day honorific from Marie Wintzer

I saw on IUOMA that in Seine  received this same card from Marie a little while ago.  I had received mine, but have only just got around to blogging again because I've been whitewashing my studio walls. URGH. I read his blog but his reading was not going to be my reading, I was pretty sure of that.

I have been mulling Marie's Radiograms ever since I started receiving them. One day I will dig them all out and put them together to see what the reading is as a group. When they arrive as one message I hear them less as speaking but more as pleading.  A few words in capitals on an area that could take more feels very important.  It wants to be understood, or does it?

I had that feeling when you are doing the crossword when you sort of know a word, even though it's a word you have never used yourself.  I don't know a word of Japanese but when I read the radiogram the first time I thought it said EVERY DAY SENSE with an upside down exclamation mark, spanish style.  When I looked the second time  I said 'sensei' - I don't even know how to pronounce it.  One translation has  'a person born before another' and another translation has 'a teacher'.

I love Marie's inexplicable radiograms.  It doesn't bother me at all that they are so open-ended.  Marie is an enigma and what is meaning, anyway?