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.

Spring Arrives Out of the (Grecian) Blue: A Kool Kard from MomKat

Spring is trying hard to settle in here in the "Sunny South" in Virginia USA, but outside my window the bright shining sun is only barely able to lift the afternoon's high temperature into the low-to-mid 50s F. But the weather is fine here in my little studio looking over a new bit of mail-art from Katerina Nikoltsou. Bounded on three sides by seas (Mediterranean, Ionian (Adriatic) and Aegean) it is hard to picture Greece in my mind without thinking of sky-blue water and warmth: features that always come with envelopes from MomKat.

 

Inside this one is a sweet treasure--a Bunny Window card with splashes of blue and green on a cheery bright yellow field. Stampings of bunnies and eggs peak through a window left from the removing of postage stamps. On the other side of the card is a trademark cluster of rubber-stamp stampings and Katerina's patented smile.

Birds are building nests. The sap is rising. Things are definitely warming up!

Thanks Kate!

InKredible FanZeen de DKult from BG in TeKsas

Continuing in Katch-up (not Ketchup!) mode...

Wow, what an envelope! GnostiK, nomadiK, anarchic, (AntarKtiK?), heretiKal, rhyzomatiK, and--GASP!--phallo-arboreKal??? OMK!

I know I am not the first to report this speKtaKular new zine issue from Biggie Borderline GrafiKs, but I hope that better late than never applies.  I have meticulously studied this text and, especially, the pictures and marginal notes, and I have come to realize something very fundamental. So let's see how these pages turn...

Shall I reveal the mystery? Can you, dear Reader, handle the truth? Obvious isn't it? Borderline GrafiKs is, along with thousands upon thousands of other DKultists around the world and on several parallel (and a few tangential) planes are all stoners. Or maybe just Peter Pans who won't grow up. There is no T.O.KS.I.S! There is no Elgin! There is no KliniK!!! It's all a mass hysteria brought on my bad Kemistry.

Thank you so much Biggie for Klarifying Anti-Reality for everybody.

Off to the Races, with Mail-Art Martha

The British are Coming!  The same day I received mail art from Rebecca Guyver, I also received this fat envelope from Mail-Art Martha (MAM). I love that it is a newspaper page with a headline about postal complaints!

MAM knows well that I am a horse person, and that I have been deprived of horseplay now for nearly four months while recuperating from some surgery to rebuild a wonky foot. And bless her!!! Bless her for bringing me some equine cheer. Now I do love riding and I do love just being around horses, but I am not a gambler, and I don't go to the race track, so some of this horse-racing paraphernalia is just a mystery to me, but as trashpo raw-material-gleanings it makes perfect sense!

Among the racing forms and lottery tickets are a sweet little notecard with a personal message and a post office receipt for mailing the last message I got from MAM.  Now maybe this is a sign to pass the latter onward and see how likely it is to come back home to Kent.

Finally, but certainly not leastly, is a print of one of Martha's wonderful horse drawings. This one a Camargue. And the print is mounted on a truly sweet bit of mail-art featuring DKULT and a hurdle jumper.

Thank you again and again, MAM. And big hugs are coming your way through the vibrasphere.

Dualing Doodles: A book of dreams from Rebecca (and, Diane by proxy)

I must have fallen down a rabbit hole. Have I been gone long? Or maybe I have been in the sleep of Rumplestiltskin...

At any rate, I have been recalcitrant about blogging incoming works for a few weeks, and have been downright stupendously feloniously negligent in making and mailing new art myself.  Well, I'm awake again, so let's start a little catch-up...

This lovely 'lope came from Rebecca Guyver. I am a sucker for trees...a proverbial tree hugger...and this mighty specimen printed on a sea of green bolstered by washi-tape wonderment is sweetly serene. And a note promises a book inside!

And while lost in trees I stumbled upon this card thanking me for participating in 'Becca's Spirit of the Forest call.  And that spirit is captured in this piece of colorful ink and/or paint on a much folded crinkled bit of clay-coated magazine page paper.

But the meat of the message is to be found folded neatly into a book form, and it is a printed copy of a doodle exchange in which Rebecca has extended original works from Diane Keys...forcibly reminding me that I, myself, have been derelict and owe Diane and others my own over-doodles of their under-doodles. And here is that book of Dandy Doodling:

There are stories in these pages! So, dear blog-reading friend, can you tell whose doodles are whose? I think I can...not certain, of course, but here's a hint. One of these artists is a full-time Kult Kween and the other is an art educator.

Hope everyone who reads this will have as much much fun with this bookie as I have had just imagining all the stories it could be telling. Thanks for sharing, Rebecca, and thanks for instigating, DK.