Monday, August 4, 2025
A Different Perspective
Wednesday, May 28, 2025
I got my first AI-generated art scam email
Of course, the first time, you naively respond. But the follow-up quickly turns to a need for weird check payments, etc. and you know it is a scam.
Today, I got my first AI-generated art scam email (see below). And I am naming fictitious Ayla Schmidt here, so if anyone searches for her name, this will come up. It looks like there are a few real Ayla Schmidts out in the world but this “Art collector/lover” in the UK is nearly nonexistent online. But I did find “she” commented on another artist’s website with the exact same text used in the email I received.
Thursday, May 1, 2025
Before there was email there was V Mail
Have you ever heard of a V Mailer? 80 years ago, they were a high-tech solution for the U.S. Military. The mailers helped manage and move a very high volume of mail sent to those serving overseas. The way the V Mailers worked is the original copy was reviewed by wartime censors and photographed — then a small negative was transported overseas to be printed at its destination. This enabled the U.S. Military to drastically reduce the weight of all the mail being sent to service members overseas.
I was not familiar with V Mail until a friend gave me an old box of unused mailers.
Currently the anti-democratic regime is actively erasing and altering any parts of our nation’s history that do not fit their white supremacist narrative. Stories are disappearing from many different government websites. This inspired me to start commemorating those stories with a series of American Hero artist stamps.
During World War II, you were not allowed to add enclosures to a V Mailer. The ones I mailed out this week each include a set of six artist stamps featuring the following Americans:
- Wong Kim Ark
- Private Albert Cashier
- Dr. Héctor P. García
- Corporal Terry Toyome Nakanishi
- Susie King Taylor
- Navajo Code Talkers
Thursday, April 24, 2025
Bigger and Bigger!
Friday, April 4, 2025
Tuesday, March 25, 2025
Mail Art inspired by an Orange Crush bottle
The bottle is a time traveler. The bottle is the message.
Wednesday, March 12, 2025
Bookcase Collages
As I was gluing, I kept thinking about how my entire life has always had walls of books in the background. When I was 5 years old, we moved into a Victorian house with a large living room with built-in bookcases. They were 16 feet wide and all the way to the top of the 10-foot ceilings. At that point my parents did not own that many books, yet. My father even bought “filler” books like old encyclopedias at the Goodwill. When we moved to a New England house with less space and lower ceilings, the filler books got left behind, but the TV room still had a full wall of books. My San Francisco apartment is filled with more than 1,000 books. I even worked in an office for many years where every time I looked up from my desk there was a wall of books.
I imagine looking at all these books for all these years might be part of the reason for my latest art obsession.
I am not done yet…