Catching up: Mail from Gina Ulgen, Keith Chambers and Linda French

Wow of wow where does the time go. I have been very remiss in keeping current with my blogging of mail art, and even worse--MUCH worse--in repaying the kindness and creative energies of my correspondents. So here's a trot in the right direction.

 First step:

Very classy mail art piece from Gina Ulgen. Numbered 19/50, this is one of an edition Gina sent out from Norwich in July. I really love the vintage feel of the envelope. The card itself is a sweet little collage of The Queen's Chamber---very Versaillesque--with Marie herself--or a clone--standing in to be chilled by a giant Edwardian fan. Not too obvious in this scan is a sweet little golden bead embellishment hovering about the queen's bustle. Gina, dear, whatever are you thinking...

:-}


And another step:

From the epitome of Horror Vacuii to the damn dead simple with a card from Keith Chambers. It's also got a touch of vintage feel to it in that the card is a kind of old-fashioned oaktag paper with a faux-weathered rim of golden-orange.  The little pearl of wisdom--or is it simple foolishness?--written thereon makes for the sort of poetry my aging brain is prepared to handle these days.

and then a hop-skip-jump to a tiny envelope from Linda French:

A really cool envelope made of Linda's wonderful monoprinting and stamping. Love the colors, textures, pen-scratchings... and especially the little being on the label in orange and on the rearside in black. Inside the envelope was a gem of a mixed-media ATC.

This peace, titled 9/11, is both powerfully scary and playful...if such a concept can be joined to an evocation of great tragedy.  Really quite a treasure.

Thanks so much to Gina, Keith, and Linda. I will be visiting your inboxes ASAP!

Dan

Zapata Vive!: A printmaker's gift from Mizael Contreras

It was a very good day when I found a mailing tube from Querétaro in my mailbox and it was adorned with three very large and gorgeous Mexican postal stamps.

Querétaro is a wonderful old colonial city, the capital of the state of the same name, and a wine-and-cheese center in the highlands northwest of Mexico City. I've been fortunate to have had the chance to taste some wonderful wines from the region, and I have long promised myself to make it some day to the annual wine and cheese festival in neighboring Tequisquiapan. My brain was swimming with great memories of former travels as I pried the cap off the mail tube.

What I found inside is a real treat!

It's a very beautifully made limited-edition print combining an intaglio background and stenciled overlay. The print declares itself to be Zapata, though I don't believe the image is really that of the famous revolutionary guerilla warrior, Emiliano Zapata, who always wore a heavy black mustache. The print image area is approximately 8.5 inches square on a 12x16" hand-torn sheet of fine printmaking paper. A real treat and a genuine treasure!

I have met Mizael through the printmakers group (Press and Roll) on the Iuoma-Ning platform. He wrote me some time back asking if I would be interested in exchanging prints. Now he has set a very high standard, and I had best come up with some fine printmaking to return the generous favor.

Muchas gracias, Mizael! Watch your mailbox!

Doo The Doodle w DK and The Doodlebugs

 

Doodle Therapy has managed to become a intricate and essential element in the fabric of the DKultiverse. Perhaps it has proven its value as an antidote to InToxisation! My most recent incoming from the Elgin Mansion is in the form of a fabulous bookie constructed, apparently, by DK herself with substantial assistance from mostly anonymous mansion staff and visitors.

 There are literally hundreds of stories occurring simultaneously in the covers and pages of this little literary and graphic-arts gem. Feeling quite inadequate as a critic of this rapidly emerging genre, I will leave it to you, fair readers to thoroughly enjoy this work without any interventions from me. So, here I present Shurup & Doo The Doodle.

Almost as though to prove this is an authentic DK mailart masterwork, there were also wondrous tidbits of ephemera and found objects included in the envelope, as well as an original annotated copy of the current DKULT Emergency Plan:

A Fat Pack of Wow from Linda French!

Lordy but Linda is a productive artist, and with every new mailing from her it seems her skills get more and more sophisticated. Here's the latest envelope:

In the practice of mail art there is always a bit of an attempt to see how boldly we can flout the rules, regulations and conventions of the world's postal services. In this innocent-looking example, Linda has stamped both sides of the envelope with perfectly legal US postage. On the front side, with the addresses, there are some very nice uncancelled vintage stamps--I could steam them off and use them on y next mailing! The stamps that went through the cancellation machine are actually on the reverse side. So what? So it means some mail clerk had to do what mail clerks often hate to do: look at the letter and make a decision. Hopefully, said mail clerk also got a smile from doing it.

First out of that fat envelope was a little package wrapped in some fine onion-skin type of paper which, upon unwrapping, proved to be a sheet from a sewing pattern for what looks like a toddler's onesie outfit.

What was wrapped inside? Why, this was:

Message Board

The image above is the obverse and reverse sides of a ca. 4x5 card made on corrugated cardboard. The backside is painted or monoprinted, signed and dated. The front is a wonderful web of black string or floss caging in little "messages, cut bits of folded text and patterned paper. Several rectangular bits of colorful painted paper are mosaic'd with colored notebook binder reinforcement rings and all is pasted down over yet another beautifully brightly painted surface. Clever, intricate, tactile and beautiful.

But wait! There's more!

Linda knows I am a member of Karen Champlin's ATC Rebels group on the IUOMA Ning platform, and has sent me a number of wonderful artist's trading cards, both originals and some giclee prints. There are a couple really cool Zentangle-type cards, a fun and funny "paint by numbers" and a pretty sweet pen and watercolor drawing of some sort of grass or grain. The bottom card is embellished with parts from a golden pin of some sort--a lapel pin or tie tack perhaps?

And finally there is this:

 

This is an ATC-size "magazine," or, rather, the cover and two of the dozen or more two-page "spreads" from this tiny magazine. I have only included a sampling, because, after all, I don't have to share everything, do I? 

Linda, you have really stuffed a lot of wonder in that envelope! Thanks so much for sharing your bounteous creativity with me.

A Treasured Radiogram from Empress Marie

Marie W, aka Marie Winzer, aka Marie Wakōshi Chūo, aka Empress Marie has somehow randomly chosen me to receive one of her highly valued Radiograms from Japan. I believe it might be #12 or 13. I've been following Marie's travel and mail-art blog for a while, and I am thrilled to have this treasure.

Marie, my distant correspondent, I am feeding the monkey woman, but it is to no avail. She insists she is strictly following the No-Calorie Diet craze currently sweeping the land. Thanks, nonetheless, for the reminder,

Cows, race cars, donkeys and doodles: Love my mail from Carina Granlund

There is never much doubt where a mail-art parcel is coming from when it comes from Carina Granlund. No two are ever the same, but they all look like Carina's!

I mean, really...who else would be sending an envelope with a litho of some old farm scene on one side and an auto racing form on the other?

And just stick with one of those themes, inside there is a vintage photo of a Finnish racing car champ from 1906?

 

 And just since consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds, and there is nothing small about Carina's mind, there are pages of doodling-art supreme, complete with a mea culpa about a missed banana-art opportunity:

But Carina's art really shines in these two pieces:

 Yes, Dear Friend, I am back on my feet and moving...a bit slowly at first, but...

That said, I'm still not smokin'. Haven't done so in 18 years.

 I haven't the foggiest idea about what the  Karin Kessel affair might be, but the pen and water color drawing is simply wonderful.  Thank you sooooo much,  Carina. Your mail-art friends really do wish you would come on over to IUOMA (and TrashPo) on Facebook.  We're all reading and following on Ning, but you are missing some good times!  Thanks for the art and the love: xxxooo!

Strange Animals: Great card from Keith Chambers

Last month Keith Chambers was mailing out some wonderful cards with some big beautiful animals doing weird things. So glad I got one of them.  Love this series, Keith!

Thanks. Return favor coming soon!

Doodle Therapy Results:TFP from Rebecca and Figgy Guyver, Diane (and Tony?) Keys, Lucky Pierre and Gone Postal!

No identity is obvious on this fantabulous envelope, but it is fat with promise of fine stuff inside:

But there is a hint of the sender in doodly sketch of a recumbent dreamer across the envelope's flap. And my guess was correct, for inside was a copy of the exquisite new little bookie hot off the presses from Nayland Farm Boekje Press: producer/publisher of grand, tiny, exquisite volumes of mail art madness. In this case it is another fab exercise in Internationally Collaborative Doodle Therapy.

Note the understated and elegant cover typography!  Since the contents of this precious work have been eloquently blogged by my correspondent,  DKult Scribe Mink Rancher, I will refer my readers wanting to fully peruse the pleasures of TLP#3 to that review here:
<http://iuoma-network.ning.com/profiles/blogs/part-ii-tlp-3-doodle-therapy-by-rebecca-guyver-uk-diane-keys-usa?xg_source=activity>

With each completion comes the possibility of new beginnings, and Rebecca and Figgy have seeded the field with a couple pages to get us started:

Being in some serious need of doodle therapy myself, I will begin immediately. Anyone care to join us?

Rebecca: XXXOOO!!!

What Goes Around Comes Around: Collappropriation with David Stafford

Always happy to see mail art for Rob and I from Dave Stafford. Never quite know what to expect. today's treat is a two-sided 5x7-ish card in a plain brown wrapper. On one side:

 Some well-used rifle cartridge shells standing on a well-used table top or something similar. Shells appear to be perhaps .223 Remington or the military equivalent .556 NATO.  Has Dave been hunting? Just finished up a weekend of National Guard duty? A tour in Afghanistan? These are perhaps found objects of uncertain provenance? Whatever the image's source, the dark sepia tone, the strong diagonal lines and the symbolic power of old brass make for a cool picture.

Now, flipping the card over:

I find a 40s-50s-vintage headless dress model, a yellow-orange pomegranate- and a graphically-flat spray of roses have invaded a print of mine called "Sentinal" featuring a Sentinal Oak draped with moss standing along an inlet in Beaufort, South Carolina. Oh my.

That print was one I made for a gallery exhibition I had, called "I am a Tree Hugger," for Earth Day in 2012. As Earth Day 2015 is very much upon us, here is another image from my Tree Hugger show for you to work with. Consider it a velvet gauntlet thrown down.

Thanks for bringing color to our world, David!

Of Hams in Cars: A big card from Borderline Grafix

I think every piece of mail art I've received from B-G over the past couple years has been something completely new and different.  Each one seems to bring in new techniques, new media, new sorts of imagery. Some have been postcards. Some have come in big envelopes. Some have been artist stamps. All have been great fun to receive.

This new one is no exception. A big mixed media card with two car-related images on one side with an address side sporting a nifty sticker and B-G 's always-present stampings. Both of the car images seem to date from the 60s. The upper image is a car I am hard-pressed to identify. I think my internal encyclopedia of 50s-60s American automobiles is way above average, but I cannot pin down this beauty. My intution says something Ramblerish or even Studebakerish, but I need help. Anyone have the answer?  Whatever the model, it just looks dandy in those big old half-tone-screen dots and Biggie's painted embellishments.

Now here's what ties the two images together beside their decade of provenance.  The bumper of the upper vehicle and the dashboard of the lower one both sport the accoutrements of amateur radio operators: the "hams" in this blogs title. That station wagon is sporting a big ol' fiberglass radio antenna. What exactly the fellow is doing with that hand piece in the other car is another mystery to me. I assume it's a mic, but it also seems to have a view screen of sorts, but this image is way older than even the oldest iPod or other portable visual device. Any insights?

I always like mysteries and any mail that keeps me running back to Bing and Google to solve them. Thanks B-G.

Joy happens! Mail-art from Linda French

A gorgeous 5x7-ish collage card from Linda French comes bedecked with beautiful bits. A butterfly, sparkles, gilded ginko leaves, fanciful flowers and a dreaming boy all set off a quote saying that joy does not just happen. I say the writer of those words is wrong. This mail-art and its sweet, kind sentiments from Linda popped a pretty bright episode of joy when I first saw it. And it continues to do so as I look on and reflect on it.

Received and appreciated with Joy!

Thanks, Linda
PS: I'm healing up nicely!

Avocado Iconography: Mariana Serban Plays With Fire

Mail-art envelopes from Romania are always, always a cause for happy dancing at my house.  Mariana Serban's packages invariably contain something ingenious, playful, and unique. This one is no exception. In fact, if at all possible, I believe Mariana has outdone herself, moved into a whole new dimension, that is.

There are all the standard elements of Mariana's art here: playful but very skillful drawing, the usual female figure, crayon-like colors, bits abd pieces of ephemera and what???  Well, what might not appear so obvious in this flat picture is that this object of art is sculpture!

Titled "3D Avocado House," the basis of the piece seems to be a bit of blister packaging that has been crumpled up by exposure to heat, as though it had been on the stove and had begun to melt. The hills and valleys caused by melting are taped over with strips of packaging tape which are draawn on, partly concealing and partly revealing the dried, mummified peel of a long-deceased avocado. Setting off the piece is a bit of marginalia salvaged from some sort of recipe calendar or food diary.       

Like a lot of Mariana's work, this one has some of the "feel" of a classic icon. The house, the figure, the colors, the refuse, the avocado leather...all say this is pure TrashPo genius! Whose job will it be to induct Mariana into DKult and, perhaps, launch DKultRo as a force to reckon with in Eastern Europe!

Mariana, big hugs to you! This one goes on my studio wall!

Banana Fortnight Extended: I'm Stuck on the StickerDude

Joel Cohen, in NYC, is The Sticker Dude, and if he is not in your correspondence network, he should be. Wonderfully nutty, Joel's take on reality reminds me of some of the gang from the old Peace Eye Bookstore, Ed Sanders's hole-in-the-wall-of-reality in the East Village of the late 60s. Do you understand Yippie! of maybe Fug-it? Well maybe I'm just getting old....

;-}

This is an envelope from a fellow who is not afraid to play. Peter Pan is alive and well in mail art! Don't grow up, for Heaven's sake. Just Don't! I get it. I like it.

Riding the spirit of World Banana Day, which I celebrated with other celebrants over at IUOMA-Ning's Bananas group led ably by Neil Artist-in-Seine, Sticker Dude has graced my mailbox with a bit of banana-scented artwork and one of his stickers derived therefrom. Enjoy:

And as a bonus--a helluva bonus!--Joel has included a copy of a wonderful booklet he, as publisher/editor of Ragged Edge Press, produced in 1998. It's Vittore Baroni's work, Mail Arts' Eternal Network: A Fountain of Youth. An insightful and still timely essay into the Never-Never-Land quality of art's biggest and longest-lasting underground movement. The book is illustrated with works from mail-artists' responses to a call from Vittore. It's a great little book, and if haven't seen it, I suggest you beg, borrow, steal, or, gasp!, purchase a copy from Joel at Ragged Edge Press. Go on...Google him!

Thanks, Sticker Dude. Very much appreciated.