Blue Heron Lake

To celebrate the renaming of Golden Gate Park’s Stow Lake to Blue Heron Lake I created an artist stamp for this month’s meeting of the San Francisco Correspondence Coop.

What to do with Add-n-Passes? Make a Zine!

There was a time when I liked add-n-passes as part of receiving and sending mail art.   The idea is that you add something to a piece of mail art and then send it on and so forth.  Eventually it returns to the original sender.   I even started a few myself.   In 2012 I launched an add-n-pass based on geological layers that got a great response.  I have always found the better ones have some sort of theme.

But like many mail artists, I have gone off the add-n-pass. In my opinion, scrawling “add-n-pass” on a piece of paper and mailing it to me, is far from the idea of mail art.  It all reminds me of those cursed chain letters when I was a kid.
I still like doing truly collaborative pieces with other mail artists, but the add-n-pass is usually annoying.  On a rare occasion when I receive one that is all but finished, I will complete it and return to the original sender.  Nowadays I scavenge the good bits for one of mail art, artist scrapbooks (see image below ).
The new year began with a brilliant solution to the add-n-pass problem.   I received this little zine from Josh Ronsen made from add-n-pass scraps and I LOVE it.   Josh has come up with a great way to start my mail art year.