Mail Art Perfect

The Artist in Seine is the master of evoking something more with  few recycled bits. Here we have Napoleon, the fashion industry and the impressionists rolled into on. A.I.S. makes me want to fall in love on a Parisienne street, to lurk on the Rue..  to see the glamorous cavort. Oh to be anything but an American living the England!

Thanks for the deluge of sentiment! And it is Mail Art perfect!

When Everything Sparkles

I remember when the Artist in Seine's holiday greeting arrived. It am always excited with this mail art. and the reindeer was twinkling in the front garden, the baubles were on the tree and everything was possible. Conjuring Howard Hodgkin kissed by Gillian Ayres, I can almost see the holiday spirit across the channel. 

Cheers, Artist in Seine! Happy last day of Chinese New Year, happy 2022 and see you in the post or maybe at the Tate one day! 

 

Climate Dots

There are two reasons that this mail art from The Artist in Seine says COP 26 to me: 

• a cuff-linked arm with some sort of name badge… 
• and what I am going to call climate dots. 

Perhaps the climate dots indicate the uplift from one of the duelling millionaire astronauts.  It is an atmospheric piece with the feeling of night and the feeling of the night sky.

Thanks! I love it.
 

unnofficial, unlicensed, un autherized pineapple mail art

The Artist in Seine, if you aren't familiar with his work, sends 'unclothed' oddly shaped, repurposed objects through the postal system, as mail art. In the past when I was exchanging with him regularly, I found myself curious about what would get through the postal system because it was as if I had this little voice telling me, Do it! Dean would do it. I was always looking for things that could work as mail art. Once I made a booby body that I sent to Vizma.  It was very large and slightly embarrassing for the postal staff in Australia.

So, getting this pinepple from Dean is absolutely perfect and I have begun looking at objects differently, again.

I like it this way too. It seems to have a face. It becomes a totem figure or a silly bird. but I wonder if the hand is voting.  Which state is that?

 I scanned Dean's mail onto black so I'm not sure if it does the barcodes through the haptic holes any justice. They are coloured too. This all makes me long for a plane ride, to gather up some mardi gras beads and to drink a pina colada. Thank you Dean. Send me a message on IUOMA if you've moved.

Barcode Restaurants

So excited to receive my first mail from Artist in Seine (if he is in Seine) for at least a year or two.I'm also excited and a little nostalgic to receive this postcard. It probably arrived right around the day we exited the EU. Long sigh, to be followed by pining for being part of Europe. and if Tavernas or bistros don;t have barcode paintings, then they should! They are very cool. I'll have pommes frites and that rosso di tavola will do fine.  Thank you, Dean.

You can't choose your family - Caning stories from Artist in Seine

In January, hot and bothered from a bad will, I sent Artist in Seine a no longer needed household object.  Divesting myself of something was a way to wipe the person and his parsimonious family from my consciousness as well as my house. I sent my object all wrapped in plastic, as is my style , and you can see more about it here on Artist in Seine's blog: http://iuoma-network.ning.com/profiles/blogs/rebecca-guyver-used-trivet?xg_source=activity

Artist in Seine has his own customary style of using ornate and apt bookcovers as a postcard.  This postcard weighs a lot.  It turns out canes are heavy, cane handles are heavy too! And how he managed to afix them to the book cover and for them to make it over the Channel in tact, I can't explain. 

The waves of the front cover are exquisite and the way the canes echo them makes this a special and aesthetic piece of conceptual art!  I like that. But what I really like about Dean's reply is the stories we have shared and the way we are communicating visually, and haptically about unreasonableness in a mail art sort of way!

Read Dean's poem!

The only other thing I will say about canes is that I had never heard of caning until I went to Kenya as a Peace Corps volunteer and was expected to use the cane to control my class.  Needless to say I didn't and I didn't report anyone to be caned for some of the spurious caneable offences. socks down, unpressed shirt, disagreeing with a superior. Since moving to the UK I have heard stories of people my age WHO WERE CANED, so even if you think Dean's story might be a little far-fetched.  It can be like that... and I agree with Dean; the canes are better off glued to a book cover, especially when they make it look so pretty!

The wooden object that I posted to Dean

Hooked no 1152 - Artist in Seine

Dean is fishing for compliments with this handy dandy folding collage.  I am hooked, but Dean knew that I would be as he affixed the stamps. Hooks are to claws and sharks and if I were you I'd stay out of the water.

Especially when wearing a bikini, as if.

Time pins us down, a bit like a hook, so don't listen to the critic in you, make comic strips and dream of hot sauce, you'll be a happier person.

Much better to be snug in your beach house.  But whatever you do, call police 17, if it gets too frantic. JAMBALAYA. Many thanks, Dean.

Live Irresistible south of South St - Artist in Seine

We all have our favourite materials and Artist in Seine likes a book cover to fashion his exhuberant mail art! This one seems to come from a bilingual schmogassborngof a science book. It is quite topical in that it reminds us all of our times tables, something which the UK Government is preoccupied with at the moment…

In Dean's dream world everyone and every thing is irresistible, from the feather wing outfit to the El Dorado motel. Heck, even the builders get to hang around upsde down reading the paper in Deantopia. and if I got to choose a street to live on, I'd take Passyunk, for sure.

Artist in Seine puts a fizz in the January drizzle

While I consider myself a proficient multi-tasker, when it comes to being home with family, I try to pour all my energy into being with them and all the work that goes along with their visits. I pretty much stop all creative endeavours. So it took considerable discipline not to open my mail art until now.  I didn't get scads because I have been something of a 'missing mail artist' for months, but what I did get looks fabulous, so I will be opening it, and blogging it when I get a moment between the after-christmas jobs, as the family depart over the next few days.  

But this is about DEAN and the cheer he sent me and how it's cheering me up as I lug the champagne bottles to the bottle bank and sigh.

It's truly amazing that Dean, having never been to Nayland Farm, knows how we celebrate, the toasts, the cakes, the candles, the decorations - it's uncanny. The only way we differ from the oppulent lifestyle that Dean depicts is that Dean's world looks so orderly… Now where did we put the extra wine glasses? 'The timer's going off, whose timing something?' WE need another chair…

We have an annual gathering a few days after Christmas (because I never know what else to do with my birthday) and I have to admit to downright pandemonium as the first guests arrived. We don't have chandeliers either.  

Dean's card folds open to the two page spread below.  It is made of heavy card and looks to be a repurposed piece. I recognise the spent sticker page from years gone by and again it makes a wonderfully festive impression! 

Dean's firework display, (complete with Christmas full moon) is also similar to what we had around here in Battisford Tye. Huge thanks to the Artist In Seine for spreading the festive spirit into January. I will eat a few black-eyed peas for him so it's a lucky 2016 and get my mail art ledger out to decide which of the many, many international mail artists I owe mail to will be first on my list!

a trio from the Artist in Seine

 Some time ago I receieved a trio of mail art from our Artist in Seine.  I had sent made him a Colour of Mail art book and wanted to check on his address. He didn't know what I was sending him but, I guess he decided to front load me with mail art, just in case.  Last year I sent him a burnt and crumbling mince pie over the holiday period… As ever I got a real treat!

Artist in Seine is very good about labeling his work.  no 679, sent on 20th December, feels like a letter home from a soldier.  Are those the micro chips from the buried object left in the desert last year?  Artist in Seine has been 'disappeared' for some time.  Is this a clue to what he's been doing in his absence?

Number two (no 690) was completed on 26th December.  WHY NOT MAKE THIS A WINE TRAIL?
Still on the soldier theme, decisions are being made, man down and some scary guns.  Artist in Seine is making the most of his down time, though, it seems.  But what does a wine trail look like and does it take one to Pisa, Rome and the Middle East?

In the final piece, no 701,  'Headgear'  -  signed on January 1st -  I sense a fragmenting character, or else the evervescence of Christmas  has brightened and lightened him. Maybe the wine trail is a factor? maybe it's shrapnel.  Whatever, I love the metallic, graphic feel! And luckily the odd shaped postcard, the confusion of barcoades and the words: 'pigs in blanket, RockJock, headgear' didn't challenge the postman so much that it was lost in the mail.  Great to hear from Artist in Seine after so long, and he can expect somethings from me soon.