Listen to 'A Migrant's Tale'

Thank you, Kevin, for such an important mailing! A few years ago, when I volunteered with Suffolk Refugee Support, suffolkrefugee, I helped hang an exhibition of photos of migrants arriving by boat into the UK. The photos were harrowing. I think it was a debate about UK's migrant policy that made our son the caring adult he became. I applaud you for shining a light on ths and for reminding us all to consider it and to listen.

 

Mailart, not Art by Mail

Richard Baudet and I have been exchanging for many years, albeit, annually.  Richard's mail art is instantly recogniseable, his calligraphy, his pallette. The first thing I notice about this mailing is the pillows, interspersed by stamps and campbells soup. It makes me wonder about richard's home… what kind of cushions does he have? Handwritten mail! Nothing beats it.

Richard sent me a note, too.  GET well soon! I am vaccinated (once) and am careful.  Take care and let us know that you feel better.

 

Celebrating Garden Flowers

I love this very yummy postcard from Cascadi Artpost! When it arrived I hoped it was a precursor of what was to come (seeds) and lo and behold a day or two later... Seeds arrived! But this postcard also made me long to make a new flower mailing, myself. 

That's one of the BEST things about mailart.  The conversation, the very slow conversation in postcards and letter that feed off each other! I will respond. Thank you Jack.

 

I'm a cheerleader for the Sticker Dude

The Sticker Dude has a plan.  You can construe it by looking carefully at the stamps he chooses. He is a postal Greek God, an international postal force, a conservation-loving, Black Lives Matter, Olympic enthusiast, American football supporter, hopeful hospital believer and rings the liberty bell far and wide. 

He continues to add to my archive of mail art, assuring my place in Suffolk mail art history forever. Thank you Joel! Lots of great stuff here.  Look carefully.

 

Armchair travelling in the time of Covid

 

If you are like me, you have spent a fair bit of time getting to know your close surroundings VERY well in the past year. Luckily, Ted Trager has sent me on some armchair travelling. I don't even need to put petrol in the car. 

The stunning black and white images piqued my curiosity.  I haven't been to any of the places in the photographs.  Have you?

Dry Tortugas National Park is in the Gulf of Mexico, west of Key West, Florida. It comprises 7 islands, plus protected coral reefs. Garden Key is home to beaches and the 19th-century Fort Jefferson. Loggerhead Key has a lighthouse and sea turtles. On nearby Loggerhead Reef, the Windjammer Wreck, the remains of an 1875 ship, is a popular dive site. Bush Key is a nesting site for seabirds like sooty terns. 

Coral Castle is an oolite limestone structure created by the Latvian-American eccentric Edward Leedskalnin. It is located in unincorporated territory of Miami-Dade County, Florida, between the cities of Homestead and Leisure City.

                                                    

Giant Rock is a large freestanding boulder in the Mojave Desert near Landers, California, and the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center Twentynine Palms. The boulder covers 5,800 square feet of ground and is seven stories high.

Desert Christ Park is a 3.5-acre sculpture garden in Yucca Valley, California. The park was sculpted and created by Antone Martin, a former aircraft worker who died in 1961 at the age of 74. 

I'm not sure who this man is but there's something about the moustache that makes me think of one of my dastardly post-truth senators. But as I have never met Ted, it could be a self-portrait, a zoom portrait ... a bit of DKULT doodle therapy.

Happy New Year to you too, Ted.

No stamping on the constitution. Steve HB Howell

I love getting mail art from new people and Steve is a new correspondent. I don't know much about the front of the postcard… is it recycled?  Is Steve a glass/clay artist? Nevermind, I thin the key to this mailing is the flipside. It is a beautiful aesthetic composition of stamps, postmarks and political statement. 

I think I'll send him some ost truth stamps! Liberty, freedom, the constititution. Phew. 

 

Celebrating Fly Cult and Operation Cornflakes

My new correspondent, James Gillen, suggested that Chuck Welch, Crackerjack Kid, would like some of my portraits for heroes stamps, so I sent Chuck mail art from my latest series. It was thrilling to get a quick reply and some beautiful Lunar New Year mail art!

I didn't know Amalgamated Confusion was a collaborator. nor do I know much about Chuck's process.  This is my first mail art from him, I think, but I am delighted to be corresponding.

I noticed the Trump stamp and the german words and wanted to know more.  This is what I learned!

Operation Cornflakes was a morale operation by the Office of Strategic Services during World War II that aimed to trick Deutsche Reichspost into inadvertently delivering anti-Nazi propaganda to German citizens through mail.^[1]

The operation involved special planes that were instructed to airdrop bags of false, but properly addressed, mail in the vicinity of bombed mail trains. When recovering the mail during clean-up of the wreck, the postal service would hopefully confuse the false mail for the real thing and deliver it to the various addresses.^[1]

You can read more here: Futsches Reich

Of course I will send more stamps and info.  Soon!

 

Year of the Ox - Year of the Cure

As I filed my mail art, recently, I had to add two cartons to spread out my alphabetised folders and to add some new ones.  I have about thirty mail artists who have their own folder, otherwise, most letters get a folder and some have more than one. The metal that holds the folders in place bends and the folders collapse and then i know it's time to add a folder.  

Tofu has his own folder.  He has sent me some wonderful stuff over the years and I am delighted to have this mailing from him, commemorating the Year of the Ox and masks!  You can see more of tofu's work here: http://tofuart.com

Ziggy Gillen and his Thread count from Hawkinge

Great to get postcard 2 of this series from James Gillen. Its graphic punch with it's British/American or simply MAIL colours and exciting text are a east for the eyes.  Does anyone else think Ziggy Stardust when they read the image? 

I suspect James thought I'd NEVER get his first postcard, so followed up with another... which was speedy by comparison. Lucky me.

I will reply soon,  but I need to finish my current series first and the garden is already interfering with my mail art output.