Florida Hijinks

What to do with a bunch of old instamatic photos from the 1970s. Instamatics were popular point-and-shoot cameras that used square format, 126 film in easy to install cartridges.  My own first camera was an instamatic.  The low quality of the camera and the cheap film has left us with faded snapshots 40 years later.  

Technically these are not “found photos” as I know the source. I ended up with a stack of some of my grandmother’s photos albums.  Albums filled with snapshots from Florida vacations with her friends and coworkers.  My grandmother had a successful careeras a department store buyer and these pictures were taken on well-deserved vacations.  Look closely, she is in some of the shots.  There is a lot of drinking, smoking, and partying going on as well as fishing and lying in the sun.

Because the photos are not family photos, they had no personal, sentimental value for me.  Get out the scissors, reach for the glue!  Here are some of the originals now repurposed in a new series of photo collages.

Meximail

Last month, when I was in Mexico I picked up these geography-themed loteria sets at a 25 Peso store.  I was trying to think of way to use them in some mail art — then I saw this story about how the Mayans invented a rare shade of blue.  That got me started, it was going to have to be about blue.  A series of pyramids were painted on the backs of the loteria cards.  Too delicate for postcards, they ended up in envelopes. This series is being mailed out this afternoon.

Awesome Envelopes!

Every now and then you have to just post some of the amazing envelopes that the mail art arrives in.  These are from the mail artists Adrienne Mason, Monica Lee, Crackerjack Kid, Pier Roberto Bassi, Marina Salmaso, Virgo, Eduardo Cardoso, Maria Quiroga and Ed Giecek. 

Collage and Color

Braving throngs of summer tourists on Haight Street, I make my way up to my post office box.  It is always worth the trip, here are just a few of the pieces of mail art that were waiting for me in the last few weeks:

1. Gregg Biggs – Museum of Unclaimed Ephemera – California
2. Jennifer Utter – California 
3. Sagebrush Moderne – California 
4. Skooter Fein – California 
5. R.F. Côté— Canada
6. Katerina Nikoltsou – Greece
7. Robin Sparrow– New Zelaand
8. Serse Luigetti – Italy