Collage Dreams

 

For many years I have collected and held on to a great amount of ephemera to use one day in various collages.  This has included maps, postage stamps and hundreds of postcards.   More recently I have been using up a lot of what I have saved for decades.  Much of the material has ended up in artist books.  My latest artist book, Collage Dreams, incudes 20 handmade, or as one now says, analog collages.   Each collage is 10.5” wide x 11” high and made entirely from the contents of postcard booklets dating from 1910 to 1950.

 

When I started these collages with the goal of creating an artist book, I did it without an intentional agenda.   This project was simply taking images out of their original context and arranging them to make pleasant and even amusing landscapes and cityscapes.  Yet, as this series of collages neared completion, I began to suspect that I might be recreating some of the surreal, fragmented places that I keep seeing when I dream.   I need to ask myself whether some of my dreams are about collaged places I will create instead of actual places I will one day visit.

A book is now available that includes all the collages.   Some of the images are also available as prints.  

10 Years of the S.F. Correspondence Co-Op

The first time I went to a San Francisco Correspondence Co-Op meeting was the group’s first anniversary party — back in 2012.  Here we are nine years later, and the co-op is now 10 years old.  We missed having our party in 2020 and finally had out first in-person gathering this weekend, safely, outdoors in a quiet, financial district park.

Every time we meet, one of us does an artist stamp to be shared with co-op members.  Many keep their stamps in special passports.   For our 10^th anniversary we did something different.   29 other co-op members sent me artwork that was then turned into a set of two commemorative sheets of artist stamps.  Here is our very cooperative effort.

Envelopes and Postcards and More

The mail art that arrived this month included quite a few envelopes trying to upstage their contents.  Marina Salmaso sent a handmade envelope that needed to be disassembled to reveal a collage celebrating the 100^thAnniversary of Joseph Beuys’ birth.   Thea Albert’s mail art needed to be assembled — and the box now is on one of my bookshelves.    The mail shown here includes: 

1. Jon Foster – North Carolina 
2. Carolyn Oord (aka Kerosene) – Québec/Canada
3. Jennifer Utter – California
4. Virgo – Russia 
5. Deble Faulkner – California 
6. Chocolatine et stooby – France 
7. Serse Luigetti – Italy
8. Meral Agar – Turkey 
9. Margo Hill – California
10. William Mellott – Taiwan 
11. Gregg Biggs – Museum of Unclaimed Ephemera – California
12. Maria Quiroga – Argentina 
13. Marina Salmaso – Denmark
14. Thea Albert – Washington State