Oh Lordy, I Have Missed This!!!

A couple months ago I mounted a 50-year retrospective exhibition of selected photo works at a gallery here in my hometown of Richmond, Virginia. The show is over, the works are packed up and back here with me in my studio. I have slowly begun de-cluttering the products of entropy that always attend a busy productive period. There is at least a few square feet of work surface on my table begging for me to start making mail art. But before I get too busy making anything, I need to take the time to sit, examine, ponder, and love a substantial pile of accumulated gifts from IUOMA correspondents. Let me start here:

 

Gorgeous paper envelope! Stamped references to trash and to DKult Doodle Therapy! The queens visage and Royal Mail! Oh I knew immediately where this gem was coming from. Rebecca Guyver, of course!!!

 

My long-awaited-and-forgotten copy of TLP #7: Doodle Therapy by Rebecca and Figgy Guyver, Lucky Pierre, Katy Kehoe, and moi.  Masterful!

And the next hing in the price packet is....OOPS! A starter folio of pages from TLP #8: "Before The Sunset Fades." and a note from Bekkums thanking me and reminding me that I promised PROMISED to contribute to this "DKult classic in the making." Well, of course I did not contribute. I failed miserably to keep my promise.  Perhaps it's not too late, I thought...but NO. A tiny bit of research confirmed quickly that TLP #8 is long since off the presses and in circulation. Well...I hope there is a #9 and 10 and 11 in the planning stages, and that I might get another shot at contributing to these Doodle Therapy masterworks.

***

From the Solar Plexus of DADA came a sweet card from my Homey, Lynn Radford, during her sojourn at Black Mountain School.

 

 

That's mail art the way it 'posed to be! Thank you, Lynn!

***

While on my sabbatical, I found a new friend/correspondent...or, rather, she found me. But the bennies are all mine. A great stash of cards from Marya Dawn. Fun fun fun collages, each with a bit of reservedly sexy charm. Love them all!

 

***

My true-bluest correspondent throughout this time of my wandering from the flock has been Dave Stafford. I stay in touch with Dave via FB and Flickr as well, but here are three wonderful M-A bits from Dave, which he always addresses to both me and my sweetie. Thanks for the mailart and the friendship, Dave.  I know you're not keeping score, but I hope to catch up anyway.

First for your consideration comes the lyric of Dave's latest attempt to break into the Nashville music scene...while traveling in San Francisco. 

 

 

The next is one of those classic bits of serendipitous TrashPo Divine. A found postcard with a Profound message already inscribed by an unknown author.

 

And finally, as a stark reminder of my own recalcitrance, I am just now to the point of acknowledging the glorious holiday magic and love of Dave's promotion of my Scrubbing Weasel line being carried exclusively by Barfa Spew-Art Gifts and Crafts.  Hopefully we will soon see these prominently displayed at the Flagship Wal-Marth Supercenter in Cascadia.

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!