The End of the Year

Back from some holiday travel and the PO Box was full of all sorts of greetings and mail art.  They include:

1. Meral Agar’s new years greetings from Istanbul.
2. Dianne O’Connell sent a new years card that repurposes one of my own open studios postcards from almost 15 years ago!  The things we all save.
3. A hand drawn hand postcard from Ren Fracture (I may need to frame this one).
4. More holiday mail art form Katerina Nikoltsou in Greece.
5. One of Amy Irwen’s Text Repurposing Series.
6. And finally, new years greetings from Carolyn Oord in Québec.

What a year – and a big thank you to everyone who has been making it worth a trip to the post office!

The Ticket that Exploded

No, not the William S. Burroughs book, but in this instance, some Happy 2015 mail art from Angela Behrendt in Germany.  It all started with a ticket-themed mailing a few months back and the response pieces keep coming back.  Vielen Dank!

That horrid little bag

It is always sad to receive mail in in one of those little sorry-the-machine-ate-your-mail plastic bags from the post office.  Yesterday, I found the latest piece from the Artist in Seine (aka Dean Marks) had arrived from France in just one of those bags.  This one put on by the post office in Reno.  Well at least now I know my international mail arrives in San Francisco via Reno.

Dean always sends amazingly elaborate pieces and I am often surprised they make it through.  I actually think this latest one is intact – I suspect the pharmaceutical theme might have just raised some eyebrows up there in Reno.  I love it and will keep it out of reach of children.

Teenage Art

Just when I think I’ve gone through all the old junk that used to be in my parents’ basement, something else turns up.  Here you have some very early Tofus.  I did these when I was about 17.   It is from a time when I actually was a vegetarian, though I wasn’t called Tofu yet.  My first foray into linoleum block prints was earlier, I was about seven and taking museum classes at the Albright-Knox in Buffalo.  Oh, for art teachers they were pretty uptight.  They worried that I used such a big piece of linoleum.  Then I discovered that just using the ink roller to apply printing ink directly onto the paper in abstract patterns was much more interesting.  They had a small freak out, but what did they expect when I had been visiting that museum for as long as I could remember, blame Robert Motherwell. 

So here we have a humpback whale, a blue crab (in blue) and, for some reason, a giant shrimp above a landscape – I have no idea why.

Holiday Mail - I love December

My. P.O. Box, and even my home mailbox, have both been filling up with all sorts of holiday fun this month (and we still have nearly half a month to go).  Some of the latest treats include:

1. Poland has a long tradition of paper arts and Karen Scott knows my love of maps well.   It comes together with Karen’s beautiful paper star made from New York MTA maps.
2. Adrienne Mason  sent a handmade book from up in British Columbia that is outstanding. 
3. Fleur Helsingor December piece is sidewalk, photo collage and homage to Oakland – my second-favorite city in the Bay Area.
4. Dorothy Yuki sent a lovely hand-printed New Year’s card (the scan can’t do it justice).
5. E. Coles sent me a piece from her Routes series that is exploring time, length and travel.  Again, the scanner can’t do it justice to show the texture and added hand stitching of the piece.  One of these days I need to have an exhibit just to show off all the mazing work I received in the mail.
6. And finally, I received a calendar from Todd Young.  It chronicles this year’s art installations he created on the security gate of his home on Page Street in San Francisco.  Read an article about those here.  Todd is an artist who is helping keeping San Francisco weird, fabulous and fun.  He is a friend and a treasure.  Just go down Page Street between Laguna and Octavia, you can’t miss his house.