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.
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…
Can you make art without coffee? I did not want to take any chances so my first set of mail art for 2025 is Caffeinated Mail Art!
I always like doing book-themed work and my latest series is using various ink and book-shaped rubber stamps.
While still keeping myself informed, I also have cut way back on news, especially the mainstream, compliant, corporate media. I have stopped watching almost all TV news. And the good news is more time to read books. BOOKS! Keeping reading and stay sane.
Monday was Labor Day, and I spent the holiday working. My task was to print over 100 postcards with hand carved rubber stamps reminding everyone to vote for freedom, democracy, sanity and our future. Vote Kamala Harris! This batch was dropped off at the post office yesterday.
Inspired by the new sea turtle postage stamps from the USPS, I started carving some rubber stamps and the results are now on the way.
