New Year's Resolution: P-PAW 2015

New Years Resolution: It's time for a new PAW...in fact this will be a P-PAW!
In 2008, 2009, and 2010 I participated in an exercise in self-discipline that had been started by some online photo friends on one of the Leica groups. It's called "Picture-a-Week," and the idea is simple: make at least one good photograph each week, no matter what, without fail, no excuses. Doesn't have to be prize-winning, but it should be one that I am happy to show off to some sophisticated photography/art audiences. It was a very productive and rewarding exercise to go through and, in fact, my 2009 solo gallery show called "Café Life: a Laptop, a Cell Phone and a Latté" was a direct result of that practice.

Because I primarily consider myself a print maker--my art is producing a work on paper (or aluminum, or copper, or plexi, or ceramic...) rather than being an "imager," I want to make my 2015 exercise a P-PAW (Picture and Print a week.) Following my 2009 show, I have done relatively little photo-based art. Instead, I've been making mixed-media compositions, collages, and mail-art. I had a very nice mail-art show this year at Artspace Richmond leaving me to wonder what is the next step for me and my ADD creativity.

I keep coming back to feeling that I want to do more of what I used to do: photography. What's more, I find myself attracted to traditional subjects (landscape, nature, portraiture) as well as traditional formats (film, silver prints, etc.). So I have decided to undertake another year of picture a week discipline, complete with a top-quality print of each week's PAW. Since I love my mail-art networks and don't want to lose the friends I have made there, I think that my weekly print will become the core of a weekly mail-art piece. So mail-art friends, watch your letter boxes!

To add a little spice to the mix, I have just had surgery which renders me very immobile. I am in a leg cast and restricted to movements I can accomplish on one foot only. That will be the case for at least a couple months, with another 2-3 months in a "walking cast" I probably won't be routinely leaving the house and/or driving until at least late Spring. So no walks in the woods with cameras for me. If it isn't in my house or on my front porch, I most likely cannot photograph it. What will I photograph? We shall see...

Keep eyes peeled, Friends,

Dan M

PS: Here are some pix of recent prints of mine from the Biennial Member's Show of artspace, the gallery I belong to in Richmond, Virginia, USA. Just to get you in the mood! 

Pretty in Pink: Mail Art from Rachel Carter

With all the primary colors of Christmas so abundant in the mail, Rachel's card is a sight for sore eyeballs. Offsetting the pinkishness on the front of the card is a nice little stamp honoring Hannah Höck, who is, perhaps, the pioneering inspiration for the sort of collage that has become so prominent in mail art today.

The flip of the card is a wash through inky lines and circles with hints of yellows and blue-magenta tones.  Thanks for the uplift, Rachel!

A Sweet Get-Well Card from Judy Staroscik

Mail Art always makes my day, but this one really was just what I needed today.  I am one week post-surgical reconstruction of my right foot, and today I was supposed to have had the huge heavy plaster cast I'm wearing replaced with a lightweight fiberglass model. But such is life and predictability in the holidays season, and my cast replacement has been rescheduled for Monday.

So, I was feeling achy, immobile, stifled and cranky when Rob handed me this cool envelope. It's a nice little note-size envelope cut from a piece of decorative cardstock, simply ornamented--but look closely at that crazy text-like stamping on the front.


Inside is this:

A tasteful, elegant earthy-toned card with a layered sheet of checkerboard-design paper that appears to have been printed (?) or even stamped (?).  The centerpiece is a flower built up of many layers of die-cut paper which is covered with printed text: tiny, tiny text. I had to scan it and enlarge it on my 27" monitor before I could identify it as bits of pages from a dictionary--perhaps one of those "compact" OEDs that requires you to have personal electron-microscope goggles to read. A weirdly fascinating effect, and beautiful.

Open the card brings me to this:

A sweet thoughtful card with some unique uses of micro-text, both in the rose and in that stamp on the envelope. Love it! Thanks, Judy and Joey.

When Meaningless Means Much: Mail from Carina Granlund

A card from Carina is always a special pleasure, but this most current one got shuffled to the bottom of my pile of "Need to blog these soon" bits. Not, of course, because it was less worthy of comment and appreciation, but, in fact, because I needed more time to think about my reaction. Since I got involved with mail art a few years ago, Carina has been one of my truest, most dependable correspondents. I am amazed by her creative energy and her skills with a huge range of raw materials. My cards from Carina, all mixed-media pieces of one sort or another, have featured cartoons, road maps, post cards, stamps and stampings, pen-and-ink, color pencils, brushwork, stickers, washi tape, found art, stitchery...etc.

Each of her pieces also includes at least some element of "asemic" (meaningless) print or writing and text-based visual poetry. Carina's native language, Finnish, is utterly "asemic" to me and, I suspect, to the majority of her correspondents, and yet Finnish texts are always an important element in her works. They tease the brain's innate attempt to decode encrypted messages while providing the comforting contexts of comics, newspapers, maps, advertising and other familiar text-based fare. Her English communicating is usually in handwritten form.

This particular card transcends even her usually brilliant tight-rope walk between the meaningful message and the more deeply encrypted brain candy. Here is a quick pen-and-ink sketch I readily recognize as a caricature of Captain John Smith, one of the most colorful and engaging people involved in the founding of England's early American colonies. Carina may or may not know that my profession brought me into deep contact with and appreciation of John Smith. I think his life story would be the stuff of a very fine movie.

With the drawing is a brief fragment of hand-written text that is partly obscured by overlapping with the dark ink blobs that structure the page. It is immediately evident to me that the text is excerpted from a bit of writing about Smith and his role in the founding of the Virginia colony at James City. Smith's writings and actions are essential to understanding the early history of the colony and are central to one of the principal thrusts of my professional career as an anthropologist and archaeologist. This drawing and its half-hidden hand-written message speak clearly to me in a way that they would not--could not--speak to others.

Carina, either you are a mind reader or you really do your homework. Your art just perfectly negotiates the maze of dimensional paths (meaning--aesthetic, personal--universal, visual--textual--tactile) that make contemporary mixed media a joy to make and to receive as a gift from a talented, distant friend.

Royal Mail from the Queen Herself!

The Queen of Retailia, HRH MailArt Martha, has graced me with a very fine Holiday greeting card wishing me merrys and happys for all the special days celebrated throughout the vast realm of multi-DKultures. There is even a lovely artistamp on the envelope celebrating the Queendom of Retalia's own Shopping Trolley website: http://www.mailartmartha.org.uk/  That is where a proper subject of the Queendom can go to purchase Royal Favors in the form of e-Pubs of her nibs's mail-art, her own artistamps, and other treasures.

The card itself is imbued with special features which correspondent DVS has identified as "Precious Bodily Fluids." {Readers under a certain age may choose to update their cultural IQs by scoping out a copy of Stanley Kubrick's 1964 film Dr. Strangelove, or How I Came to Stop Worrying and Learned to Love The Bomb}.   Though I do believe we could recover a copy of The Queen's own fingerprints from our card, I don't believe that her DNA is actually in the paper.  I love the free-form tree and, especially, The DKULT bunny with a Santa hat. I might have to steal that one!

Thank you, Martha, and may your holidays be bright, sweet, and filled with love!

The Mysteries Deepen, But the Mail is Stunning! Meeah Williams?

This arrived in my mailbox just before Halloween, and I have simply waited until I felt I could say something about it that would do it justice. I haven't gotten there yet, but I really must put it "out there" for others to appreciate. From a simple discarded scrap of newspaper, the artist, who is nowhere identified (not even a postmark!) has created a richly colored and textured world of glyphs, design, asemic visual poetry, and a playfully perfect envelope!

Correspondent DeVillo Sloan had received a similar piece at about the same time, and his sleuthing skills led him to deduce that the perpetrator of his piece of this puzzle was none other than his DKULTNY compadre, Meeah Williams. As I read the fine print beneath the beautiful artwork I see advertisements for businesses in New York City, so it might just be true that the this is the work of the Brooklyn Beauty Bomber!


The innards of the envelope go no further towards revealing the artist-author, but clearly continue the revelation of some really very fine mail art.

NaDa kLoNe  continues the rich color scheme and use of newspaper as substrate, but this piece is a patchworked collage with a printmaking component of a female face as the focal point. It's a gorgeous juxtaposition!.

Next comes 3 Peeks into the garden.  A page torn from a spiral-bound journal is stitched-up with three panels of heavy paper, each an abstract miniature of a bit of a flower-garden-of-delight.

Meeah, if this is your work, I am so grateful you have graced me with this gift. Whoever the artist is, I thank you and hope that I can and will repay you with a piece you will cherish as I do this one!

Mystery Mailer turns a window inside out

I received this card in a plain envelope that was marked with the URL to a website that does not exist.  The card is an image of a painting, apparently from a book or magazine. I don't recognize the work, but it appears to depict a peremptory execution by a squad of soldiers or gendarmes, possibly Russian. A window has been cut through this image, revealing a nude figure, another painting again from a printed book or magazine. The figure appears to float over the image of the spldiers, but, in fact, lies physically beneath that piece. The collage is a disturbing image, to say the least.

The back of the card is coated with a solid blue layer of glossy ink? (above, left). It isn't readily obvious, but the blue field obscures some text. Using contrast controls on my scanner the text becomes partially legible. It appears to be an Italian text discussing art, or a specific painting, that is.

So the mytsery is this: who or what is P-ARS, the "name" on the card as well as the dysfunctional URL on the envelope. Any insights will be welcomed!

Borderline Grafix honors a fellow Lone Star State Star

Borderline Grafix, aka B-G, aka Biggie has honored me with a card which honors fellow Texan Joan Crawford. As the mini-bio-bio on the front of the card states, Crawford was born in San Antonio and died in New York, so it is fitting this card places Joan's image over a postcard described as showing a lineup at the New York City sub-treasury of folks waiting to purchase newly minted Lincoln pennies. This is both a clever and somewhat startling juxtaposition.

During her life, Crawford received many accolades, include Academy Awards, but this little card from a never-predictable B-G is a very nice tribute to a very complex woman. She has been considered one of America's greatest actresses ever, but she also made some real loser movies and will be remembered in part by her daughter's depiction of her as "Mommy Dearest."

Muchas gracias, Biggie. Sorry to take so long to post this sweet piece!

A Mail-Art Mystery DeMystified Just to be ReMystificated. Stafford Boggles My Brain!

I have learned that an unidentified mail-art mailing might just be from David Stafford, a truly creative fellow with a wonderful sense of humor and a taste for irony and narrative. It took me no time at all to decide this piece was classic Stafford, up to and including the cameo appearance of the artist himself in cartoon-alterego form on both the front and rear of this cool card.

Then to confirm my already certain conclusion that this IS a Stafford gem, I checked it to read the postmark, fully expecting to see the piece was sent from Santa Fe. But No! It was sent from Post Office 044 in Eastern Maine. Well, I do have a correspondent who sometimes dwells in Eastern Maine, but this is NOT her work, I'm certain. If I am wrong, I will gladly stand corrected, but this, no doubt, is David's brain, his wit, and his fantastic illustration skills at work here. Thanks, David!

Going postal again...Eduardo Cardosa

For artists a successful show can be both exhausting and exhilarating. With the take-down of This is Just Mail Art and Gone Postal exhibits last month, I found myself way more exhausted than inspired to move on to more and bigger and better things in mail art. That said, my creative energy is slowly creeping back, the juices are beginning to trickle, if not flow, and I find I have a small backlog of wonderful correspondence art (or artful correspondence) from some well-loved and cherished correspondents that I really have to share!

Until now I have "blogged" received work in my online photo albums on the IUOMA-Ning platform site, and on the dedicated group site for the now-ended exhibition. I will continue to use the Ning platform and to post often on the new IUOMA (2013-on) Facebook page, but I have decided it's a good time for me to blog incoming mail art on a true blogging platform. Since I have other blogs here on Blogger, I have decided that this will be the place for me to share the wonderful gifts I get from my world-wide network of obsessively (and wonderfully) creative friends.

And I can think of no better way to start this ball rolling than to share my latest from Eduardo Cardosa.

Envelope front

If you are not familiar with Eduardo's traditional style, you are really missing out and need to rope this man into your M.A. network!  It is highly influenced by the simplicity and expressiveness of medieval Japanese and Chinese painting and printmaking, including some wonderful personalized stamped "chops" that tell you unambiguously you are looking at a Cardosa piece. Lately however, we find that the Zen has been invaded by corrupting influences from DKult-TrashPo, VisPo and the widespread collage-anything-that-doesn't-run-away trend that dominates much mail art today.

In the first piece above, we see pure Cardosa, but it is one in which bold and simple strokes have been replaced by bold and simple collage bits capped by a bit of nonverbiage. The second piece, which really does not show as well as I would like, is truly evidence of Eduardo's descent into TrashPo Hell! Bits and pieces of lovely rubbish, including what could be a tape transfer of a silver microcircuit, are assembled here with the deft touch of a master of simplicity and balance. "Pensamento" indeed.

In these two pieces, Eduardo confounds my attempts to categorize his work. The ellipses on the left say "simple mark-making is alive" while the piece on the right layers the mark-making with trash-treasure and another VisPo.

And Eduardo prods us all onwards with a piece that follows much the same formula as that last one on the right, above, and it is an Add and Pass. I will certainly add, and this, too, will certainly pass. There was also a nice personal note...always a bonus in a mail art mailing. I am so glad to be a correspondent of IUOMA's resident Portuguese Zen artist. Thank you Eduardo!