Things your ought to know, especialy if you have an orchard, like we do.

This sweet thank-you-book was sent by Mail art Martha for my small participation in her joint mail art event (with Cascadia Artpost) Send in the Clowns.  Not long ago I looked up facts about Halloween because my class at the International Women's group where I volunteer teach English wanted to learn about it.  what I didn't learn is in thei book from Martha! Brilliant!

Fabulous, gorgeous stamps.  Could it be Mail art Martha and Jack clowns?

Many thanks Martha!

Stormy Season

Great to be introduced to Al Harris, the poet Caascadia Artpost quotes on his atmospheric but troubling card. The world is stormy, figuratively and literally: Mugabe in Zimbabwe; an earthquake in South Korea. I expect the pall of thefires still hangs around south of Cascadia, too.

In england we talk about the weather lots.  East Anglia, where I live, is the driest part of the UK.  It is drizzling at the moment.  I'm kind of high (for the barely above sea-level county) and the wind whips around often.

I got my winter clothes out today.  Before long it might even be cold enough for me to light the fire in the studio.

You can learn about Al and find his poems here: http://www.alharris.com/poems/support/storm.htm

It's Halloween and truth is scarier than fiction

I haven't dressed up in a few years for Halloween.  we live at the end of a spooky lane with hedges on both sides.  The kids just don't come to our door. Joel evokes the magical, scary world of the other worldly to help up see the evil that coexists in our lives. He brings the dressing up boxes of our imaginations to life, with the help of Thomas Kerr.

There's a programe on BBC radio 4  called 'Only Artists'.  The idea of the programme bugs me.  It is a conversation between ONLY ARTISTS, as if they are removed from the rest of us, as though they are divine, but I have to admit to actually liking most of the episodes I have heard.  They have had political cartoonists in conversation twice lately.  Today they were talking about the value of satirising politicians as a way of engaging the common man in dialogue,. 

Joel is always engaging me in dialogue with a few images, some stamps and stickers, and he and Thomas find unique ways to say alot about the state of the world. Halloween is a prime time to make our fears visual in iconic ways.

Another thing Joel does is sends me hand-picked clippings.  What with the Weinstein story, Joel has found an op ed that helps me to see how most women live in a constant state of anxiety.  Everyday is halloween for women.  We imagine ghouls and shadows because although the really terrible thing hasn't happened yet, or happened a long time ago, maybe this time it's our turn…

I am delighted to be on Joel's Halloween mailing list, even if it gives me bad dreams tonight.

Asemic trashpo doodle bubble

Do I recognise that doodle? Should I open the envelope? A new form of trashpo has been bornWOW or OW. Void, void, void. I suspect this is DK's latest foray into new material! I await instructions.  Do I add to this.  Do I leave it in tact? should it bounce back like a Wilson tennis ball? Or should I just relax and enjoy it?

Thank you, whoever you are.

Update: Have just checked my IUOMA messages and see this come from Borderline Grafix! 

Making Mail Art Around Coves and Rocks

This year I have travelled to Scottish islands twice and the inspiration of places like the Old Man of Hoy continue to delight me, so when I opened Herman's latest mail art, it was the folded collage that had me enraptured. I love the way he echoes the loose chipping in the marbled paper and decorative trim. These conjoined assembled homages to postcards take me to a simpler world where we all had little instamatics strapped to our necks and bought rock while entertaining ourselves collecting shells on the sand.

My cotillion days (even though I never had them) are behind me.  But I would have chosen something like the velvet dress on Herman's envelope.  I love the feel and shimmer of velvet! And look at the colour in this vintage advert!

This looks like Cornwall.  Both picutres seem to be from the south coast and remind me of happy days spent with our son when he lived down there and we'd walk. But while the scenes are beautiful, there is also something trepidatious about them, or difficult, surely, and perhaps that was what Herman was thinking of.  Or more likely he is looking at the gesture of the wall and the streaks in the marbeled paper.  Beautiful shapes and movement!

 Towers and windmills stand and spin, breaking through our view, cutting up the space. Hieroglyphics of the air - something like the psalms below that make a pattern.

I don't always include personal notes in my blog, but I thought I should give a nod to the other side of mail art, the sending out into the void and often not getting any feedback part.  The act that we are driven to do, to make and to mail without promise of reward. Please continue Herman.  Every time one of you envelopes arrives in my postbox I dance a little jig and begin thinking about a reply.  Lately I have been swamped, but one day a response (beyond these words) will come.