Pelican Island Times Three

This beautiful piece by Mike Dyar arrived a week or so ago.  I don't think I have traded with Mike before.Why not?! I have no context.  The postmark is San Francisco, so I just look and hold and let my mind wander across the imagery and words…

This piece is haptic, curious, moving and strong.  It has a slightly funny smell which I think is ink.  The back of the A3 image is black with memories of paper clips, pressed onto the surface.  I muse that Mike has painted a color print on the back with ink and it has seeped through to create something bleak.

Pelican island, I think, is home to Alcatraz.  I used to live in the Bay area and went to Altcatraz in about 2006 with my family, maybe before when I was lived nearby.  I have a (false) memory of driving around the island in a boat with Stanford friends. We loved the visit, but it was creepy. I wasn't really sure why I was there.

The letter feels like a message in a bottle.  The ink is watery.  The text is confessional. Not every mail artist is willing or able to conjure real emotion. Is that what Mike - conceptual Art is? So here we are in isolation, not quite like Alcatraz, at least not for me, but maybe for Mike? 

Thanks you! I will reply as soon as I can.

Try Walking in My shoes

These COVID days are a test in lots of different ways. I have had excellent training for this predicament of social distancing when I was a Peace Corps volunteer many years ago. Living in the remotest site for 2 1/2 years set me up for staying at home and filling my day constructively, shifting between work and slow home tasks, gardening to grow food, drawing what I saw around me to keep sadness of missing family and friends and the loss of a life unlike no other at bay etc… (Of course the Peace Corps was also WONDERFUL! 

I have done the personality tests and I've come out as a extrovert.  My sister says I am an introvert.  I'm not sure whether being one or the other innoculates you against the chaos of the moment, though.

It's really easy to look from our personal points of view and to be shocked by how someone else reads a situation or interprets a directive. I'd rather just tend my chickpeas (I sprouted some seeds and now have plants!) But, I am not abjectly poor.  I have space, beauty and a system for being here now. So far I don't think anyone I know has succomed to the virus, either, so whoever you are I just hope you keep well.

Carina's TRY WALKING IN MY SHOES speaks to me about tolerance, empathy and the shadowy world of shoes!  Her window from the abstract to representational echoes that feeling. I remember the heady days of DKult and how it was all about the hair and the shoes!

Carina has captured the world's shared feeling of being in the middle of the unknown: In Covid times we shop online; we bulk buy and then eat piggishly; we long for the things we used to take for granted… like dancing. Some of us might find the novelty interesting and a challenge while others experience something unpleasant.

Thanks Carina! Although these are exceptional times, your imagery makes me smile and also reminds me to consider my neighbour and others not quite like me and to imagine waling in their shoes.

Knee Studies and other Jokes

People always ask me how I find the mail artists I exchange with. As I recall, Herman found me.  I organised a mail art show and Herman contributed and he kept sending to me and I returned.  We have got to know each other over the years. I try to send some of my best mail art to Herman because, well, because I love getting his mail back and because it's a dialogue. The first few envelopes Herman sent me were 'unwrapped' and opening the postbox and looking in to see one of Herman's envelopes was a take you breath away moment. One got damaged and he began putting them in a simple white envelope and writing my name in his beautiful writing. I can always spot a Herman envelope.

Maybe I am particular in liking to 'understand' why the images are culled and to look for the story they tell. And at the same time, the markmaking, (or the collage mark making) is as important to the representational aspect, just like in a painting. The way the colour moves my eye across the envelope… it all goes into the pleasure of reading mail art, for me.

Herman has chosen delectable smiles for this envelope. I smile back. The hands are speaking too.  They are characters in themselves and saying funny things. And then the decoration.  It is audacious! I love it!

 The flip side makes me laugh too. I feel as if I am in French farce. 

 And the gags keep coming. All those uptight royals looking at the that tight ass.  Just gimme a little faux fur.  I love tiger print.

 nd then the poetry. 'Olleke, bolleke en knipperdolleke'.  My dutch is rusty but say those words aloud  They will make you smile.

And let's be honest.  There is nothing funnier than knees.

 And B is for Becky, a name I once took.  Orange is clearly the happiest colour of the rainbow. And a rose is a rose.

* Herman's house his 'very, very, very, very fine house in 1997.'

So going back to how I find these mail artists and why I keep them. Herman is an amazing correspondent but our houses are also similar.  Who knew?

One wall of our downstairs bathroom

The other wall of our downstairs bathroom

Herman, you have managed to make me smile, deeply, in the midst of 'this terrible crisis'.  Thank  you.

What's on deck?

These three pieces of mail have arrived over the past few days. I am every excited about them but may let them sit by my computer for a few days before I blog them… or even open them. I have a few ideas for a mail art series I want to make and a bunch of people to send mail art to.  But I am trying not to rush things. so THANK YOU Voyageur Postale, Carina and Mike Dyer. 

More soon!

Clinks of Ribbon, Poetry from David Stone

I made some stamps for Brain Cell a few months ago. I was back at being a mail artist. I sent mail and received a little more than usual, again.  And then Covid 19 arrived and everything was upended. I mean to make mail art, regularly, but I am sharing my studio and there are suddenly more chores.  Even to blog has to be fitted in.  This arrived from David at the beginning of August. I washed my hands when it arrived.  I tell you it is a different time! 

So tonight as I sat down to blog, I opened David's mail. I wish I could tell you that I have a luxurious routine for taking time with mail art but I am just in front of my computer, adjacent to my scanner.  Our daughter has my good-for-your-back chair. This one comes from a car boot sale… (will I ever go to a carboot sale again)? so I am not even comfortable.  

David's poetry was a complete surprise. I read it aloud,  The words. As I read my mind saw pictures.  The sound of the words. The shape of the words. The curiosity of the words. I will read them again, and again.  I hope you will too.  They are beautiful.

Thank you David! I will reply, eventually.

Spring Equinox Clutch - Cascadia Artpost

This mailing from Cascadia Artpost is my kind of double whammy! Having read the Cascadia CoffeeClutch from cover to cover (not yet attempted the crossword but found a few answers in the reading) now I can take my seed packet to a neglected corner of the garden and paint with flowers!  My only sadness is that when the mail went through the machine it was pierced so who knows how many seeds were lost in transit.  You can examine the images to see what I mean. 

As ever, Cascadia's post subtly brings me some Washingtonian wisdom, so Today my mantra will be: commit random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty!

Hope you are virus free in Cascadia.  Nayland Farm is an oasis of growing and making at the moment.

Remember when Weekends were for BBQs?

Peter, an Ipswich friend, accompanist, artist, former teacher colleague, sent me some mail art a couple of weeks ago. I didn't instantly know it was from him, but on close inspection it became clear.  


Juxtaposed, between (what Peter references as Hockney's 'Florals… for Spring… Groundbreaking', opened out to 13 inches, is an open-studio weekend with pizza, family and friends in our field.  You can also see Peter's gift as well as a loan.  Those were the days! I am a fan of this fan mail.

Since I blogged this, I have heard back from Peter with a little more info!

I hoped you might put 2 and 2 together when you saw the image of you all.
Such a happy time!
I hope you are all bearing up - no doubt there is plenty to do.It’s really nice to work at the piano - after 60 years I might have learnt how to practise properly slowly
If you fold what I sent you more like a concertina  VVVVVVVV  you see one image from one side and the other from the opposite direction.
It was inpiresd by Rana Begum
who also inspired the piece below.         ' Crescent '   acrylic on Ikea packaging January 2020
The Hockney is one of his new Normandy drawings - do you know about those?
The quotation is from the fictional  Miranda Priestly, EiC of Runway  (I think Figgy has grown out of thinkgs like that now|) -
when, at a planning meeting for the spring issue, one of her team said, ’They are showing a lot of florals this year,
she received the riposte, "Florals . . . for spring? . . . Groundbreaking.”

Another big thank you, Peter!

In Covid Country...Why did the country run out of toilet paper?

Carlo Pittore, text and swimmer, Sticker Dude,  design and production, Thomas Kerr, Outside Border
'Our struggle is to advance everything that isnot art.  Our struggle is to advance the human community and to prove, once again that the artistic vision lives forever.'

Answer to question in title can be found here!

As ever lots of wonderful visuals and wise words. I can envision Sticker Dude away from the Ragged Press, cutting and pasting by hand.
Many thanks.

' A man with one foot in his mouth, and the other… in the Twilight Zone.'

Mail art in the time of Covid 19 is different. Do I wipe the envelope with bleach or do I live dangerously. New York, Italy, Washington - hotspots of wonderful mail artists!  

In a later mailing Sticker Dude tells me he is well (so far) so I breathe a little easier. It truly is a twilight zone and as I stream my favourite news channel,  the speaker refers to our president as a 'buffoon'.

I think this must be one of Joel's last mailings from Ragged Edge Press which is now in lockdown. IN lockdown he has to cut everything himself and has time to make mail art, so I expecially appreciate these two hand made ATCs were made when he didn't have time and he could use his machines! Joel can say lots with a three piece collage. Are we sceptical about federalism?

I spy a limited edition sticker!

 What if the stars were such strong magnets that they attracted all the metal?  aAmost as crazy an idea as the Coronavirus going 'poof' one day and disappearing.

 Sheepishness? You can't tell a brain from a head shape? Great repetition of expression and composition!

Even though New York is in trouble, this mailing makes me homesick for NYC. New York Studio School! Thank you Joel!