Dog Days of Christmas Illness

 Great to receive this fluxus mailing from Matthew Stolte again! Great to get an add and pass which Mikel Untzilla has added to that I can finish and send back to Brasil!  Love the carcophony of pitfalls! Great to get a Stolte poem about e coli.I hope all are well. The artistamps… the dog and the asemic trashpo. 

Fantastic Un-usable Love pig and Starlet

 David Stafford sent me two pieces of mail art. The Love Pig, a commemorative Chinese New Year talisman screenprinted by the amazing Patti and the Fantastic Color Wheel.  Both are the epitome of art, aesthetic concept pieces that are meant to be viewed. They are not craft pieces that can be used and lived with in a practical way - although I could frame them...  These pieces adorn my studio until I need to put them away and then they get filed.  I have five file boxes… great big things full  of mail art and with the wonderful mail art that generous David Stafford sends me… soon I will need another one!

This is a card with a window onto the starlet.  David and Patti wish me well and use the word, 'fettle' - a fine English word to check on my health. I'm am in fine fettle D & P!

 The Fantastic color wheel which Dave recommends I should avoid using could be useful: as a poetry generator, a painting mapper, a story board…I wish I could get into that room, sit on the chair and hold the color wheel.  I'm sure it would help calm me down after the chaos of Brexit and Barr.

You don't know what you need until you have it. Subscription Opus

Once upon a time I was on Jude's mailing list, regularly. So I am delighted to be able to share this Subscription Opus! Jude has a phenomenal imagination and way of expressing it, with scores - that blows my mind. 

There's a place on the English coast, called Southwold where they have those mad pier exhibits with fantastical machines that do things you don't need.  Jude's egg machine is something like that, and the music for Virtually Free Range Chicken takes some of those words and things we associate with chickens and puts them to music or makes music from them.  

And there are lots of surprises. While I would think that the punch line (spoken as fast as possible) would support the use of free range chickens… I am reminded that they have a bigger footprint. Do you eat chicken chassé? I had a pen name of Galina Poole (back in the day)! Great good fun! Sadly the fox got all our chickens, again.

Three cheers for Ticket! Ticket!

Some mail artists go crazy and create mammoth projects that require endless hours collating, creating, photographing, scanning, making!  Cascadia Artpost is one of those kinds of mail artists! This mailing is a stuffed envelope of collaborative stamps.  Cascadia asked for our tickets and ephemera and then he turned it all into stamps. For example, that red one on the front of the envelope is one of my tickets… from the Stowmarket beer festival, 2007.  I keep way too much stuff from life so was REALLY happy to send some of it away! I wonder whether that was the beer festival ticket from the time we took our eldest with some of his friends for their first taste of legal alcohol? Whatever, it was lots bigger and now it is immortalised. 

Go through these stamps carefully.  Get your magnifying glasses out and get a feel for what your mail artist friends do with their spare time!  Wow, so excited about this! THANK YOU Jack and happy birthday!

Glorious stamps from Mikel!

Look at these beautiful asemic stamps.  They are little stained glass window gems where letters become symbols that are other-worldly and delicious to see. Thank you Mikel for a glorious mailing!

A Mail Art Cocktail from the Sticker Dude

 This envelope full of  heroes, humour and horrors is the perfect mixture, a perfect cocktail for the crazy times we live in. Anna Quindlen has always been a hero of mine...

Joel is a musician so I am not surprised he turns to music in times such as these and who better than Robert Hunter of the Grateful Dead? I'm not sure the lyrics are comforting but when I hear them I see a 'betanooner', keg of beer in the California sun and a bunch of my friends singing along. That would be a comforting way to spend some time instead of glued to podcasts waiting to hear what's next in American politics.

text by Sticker Dude and Campbell's atlas (T. Mangy) 

Mouth Man image by Thomas Kerr, rubber stamping and design by Joel Cohen, Text by Mason Cooley

 It's fab to get a new stash of mottos and words of wisdom -useful bumph - from Joel. And you can't tell but the brilliant sticker above is actually flourescent pink!

I'm heading to NYC soon but I find I can't rely on myself to make the mail art I used to make time for, no matter what. Besides, this is an 85th birthday trip to visit with my mother and other family members! so, sadly can't take up Joel's very generous offer as US stamps won't work here!

In the UK we just Graze vouchers in our Amazon orders. 

images and rubber stamping by Thomas Kerr, text by Mason Cooley, art direction Joel Cohen

p1 This is your Universe folded 4-page book

p2 folded 4-page book

p3 folded 4-page book

back page folded 4-page book

Nothing is Revealed  p1Issue 4 Sticker dude and Jamison Odone

Nothing is Revealed  p2 Sticker dude and Jamison Odone

Back page 

Nothing is Revealed  p1 Sticker dude and Jamison Odone

Nothing is Revealed  issue 3 p1 Sticker dude and Jamison Odone

Swami Beyondananada's comments: "We have a deeply divided body politic in america.  Half the people believe our system is broken.  The other half believe it is fixed." "Levity to rise above the gravity," just about sum up Joel's mailing. Thank you.