Mail art meet up at Cascadia Art Posts' & Carl Chew's !

I spy Garcia Delgado (Barraca Vorticista, Jack Lattemann (Cascadia Artpost), Joaquin Dylan Garcia, A Cascadia Diorama, Kathleen McHugh, Marnie McGrath, Robbie Rudine (AKA Dogfish), Janet Yoder, Jas Felter, Anna Banana, C.T. Chew (retired mail artist). Read on to learn about the fun they had!

Word from another era

The first rule of mail art is that you need to keep track of everything.  I have this amazing ledger but it hasn't been cracked open in… I pile up the work I recieve by my computer and pile up the work I blog in another pile and eventually I move it upstairs to my filing box and eventually I file it all by mail artist in a series of boxes. It shouldn't be this way but I am just always chasing my tail. 

The trouble is when I get something from a long time ago and can't remember the detail of it… (this was part of a project that I began where I scanned some other mail artists and people added to them and sent them back to me for me to make bookies with them. This began with Herman Kamphuis' wonderful drawing and collage.) I can't remember what I was thinking. Do I know who added to this? It looks like Pone to me but I could be absolutely wrong.  Let me know if you know.  Perhaps I will take up the thread of Dkult Doodle Therapy again. For the moment I will just try and catch up on my blogging!

Sensations - Extremes coexist

Extrovert, introvert or 'enorm', Herman has a way of reflecting the world back through the characters he choses  that tell stories that might exist.  As I have thought about my own work, I have realised that this is what I care about too, telling stories that may be true or may be invented but that we can believe. 

While this green-gloved beauty might be a well-known face, she conjures up Anna Karenina on the cusp of attracting Vronsky for me. A good book is worth a thousand images and vica versa. The man with the 'eye patch' has pathos too.  From whom is his postcard relic and is he writing to her? and if so, 'is she really going out with him?' and if so, he must have done something remarkable.  These images are the inside images of collaged card that stands 24 cm.  Below is Elisabeth Bas.  Perhaps this is her story?

Age has left its imprint on the memory, scratching the marbled paper removing the colour from the painted walls.

Marker Meisje … (from Marken?) stands by the canal and possibly the sea. In the juxtaposition we seem to learn about her, a small town girl with dreams to travel to Amsterdam or perhaps a child participant in the resistance? 

I usually paraphrase what Herman writes to me but I enclose this to show you his wonderful handwriting.

Herman and I have been exchanging for quite a few years now and ss I have got to know him (in the mail), I have learned a bit about his life. The title from this blog comes from the English translation of 'Prinkkels' at Museum Dr. Guislain Gent http://www.museumdrguislain.be/en where Herman's mail art and drawings are on permanent display! I am not surprised… Herman's drawings have been the starting point of plenty of mail art collaborations and they make up some of my treasured mail art.

Like so many mail artists (and artists) we have an abundance of artistic impulse and I satisfy this by working compulsively, gathering material and using it to make the next thing. I suspect that Herman does too.  Thank you for the beautiful work (as ever), Herman, and for a little chink of time to ponder the dichotomy of extremes.

Lost in Temptation: hobnobs, puddings and egg drops

Has Tofu visited the UK lately? Or perhaps he has been to a commonwealth country.  That's the only place that you'd find a 'Ministry of Hobnobs', a 'Pudding Museum' or a 'Hotel Eggdrop'. Let's hope the earthquake that we're all learning about hasn't affected these venerable structures! Not meaning any offence… perhaps we should all take a tea break.  Thank you Tofu.