time + color + memory = returns

 Last year I sent out a series of ATCs exploring ideas of time, color and memory.  You can read about the original mailing here.  The sets included a blank ATC to be filled in with each recipient’s’ color memories.  I have received ATCs back from nearby in San Francisco to all the way in South Africa. I learned that Jennifer Utter’s mother forbade her from wearing that lovely shade of red.  I was not so unfortunate.  Lil’ Tofu had a smart wool coat in that very color!

ATCs of Palette and Place

Yesterday’s outgoing mail included my latest series ATCs.  In this series, the Collagescape idea that I began with in 2014 takes another direction.  There are eight different designs in the series.  Each design shows different place that has been reduced to four individual colors.  The colors are used to represent a certain place and, in some cases, a time of the year.

Inspiring Paint Samples

Tickets, MUNI passes, maps, postage stamps, postcards, there have been a number of different types of material that have been used in my mail art and collages.  Now I have Meral Ağar to thank for my latest inspiration.  After the holidays it is going to be all about paint chips. 

Above (left) is one of my favorite pieces received for the Pink Mail Art show in Sacramento.  Meral used paint chips and of course, as she lives in Turkey, I like how they are all in Turkish.    As part of Pink Week, the San Francisco Correspondence Coop was up at the Crocker Art Museum where we helped visitors make some mail art.  We did an exquisite corpse piece that has been cut up into postcards and is now being distributed.  This piece (above right) using a paint chip is on it’s way to Istanbul.

Starting in January, I want to do some mail art incorporating paint chips.  I really like the idea of multilingual pieces that are all about color and language.  If you want to send me a piece of mail art using paint chips, you eventually will get one in return.  And, if you want to send me some sample paint chips, especially ones that are not in English, you know I will but them to good use.

Tofu

PO Box 170681

San Francisco, CA 94117 USA

Cloisonné is starting to make sense

I confess to having only a passing interest in most antiques and decorative objects. When I am in a museum, I make for the paintings and generally ignore most of the knick knackery. For example, there is a room at the Legion of Honor filled with porcelain. I never go in there. I’ve ignored it for years until a friend with a baby and I discovered it is the perfect, quiet place in the museum to nurse a baby. No one will care. The room is usually empty. Though a few ladies in Dresden porcelain might be a bit scandalized.

Cloisonné is an exception. For some reason I have always been drawn to it. Years ago when I was studying in Switzerland, there was a big cloisonné exhibit at the Museum Rietberg in Zürich. Over the years I’ve seen many museum shows, this is one that has stuck with me.

Today cloisonné is most associated with China and most commonly seen in Chinese pieces like the ones pictured above. The process of setting glass, enamel and gems in metal is thousands of years old. It goes back to Ancient Egypt. It actually came to China more “recently” — about 700 years ago. There is a thorough article about cloisonné on Wikipedia.

Recently my grandmother’s collection of cloisonné found a new home in San Francisco. They have sentimental value and I also find them simply attractive. Some of the pieces are early 20^th Century and a few were acquired on her trips to China. I unpacked them, placed them on top of a shelf and then sat back on the sofa to admire them. Behind the cloisonné is a recent piece of my own art. It’s made from about 3,000 small pieces of postcards. I sat there looking at the cloisonné and my own colorful work and began to understand why I am so drawn to cloisonné.

When Creating Art is an Act of Historic Preservation

Over the years, while working on collages, I began to see how using source material from a certain period could “date” a piece. I do not mean to imply that by “dating” a piece it’s somehow out of fashion. But rather I am using the term “dating” in the sense of freezing time. When I use older source material in a contemporary piece, I am creating something akin to a time capsule. So much of the material I use is destined for landfills and recycling bins. When I repurpose the material for a work of art, it in turn also becomes preserved in a way other than the placing it in a drawer or mylar envelope.

A collage can be a way to preserve various ephemera. Even after a little cutting, you are setting the material in some sort of glue for the ages. But when I start cutting, there is usually little of that kind of preservation going on. I tend to work with small pieces — thousands of small pieces. But even after I cut material into little pieces and reconfigure it, what I still do preserve is the color. And color can really change over time. Some shades of a color are very distinct to a certain time.

For example, when you see a distinct shade of a color it can trigger a memory. The color may bring an image to mind or specific point in time. It happens when you see a color like the original blue on a classic car and immediately realize that particular blue was only used on cars during the 1960’s. Memory triggering color may also be associated with clothing, household objects, old photos or printed material. It might be the shade of baby blue or pink that reminds you of a vintage telephone. There are distinctive shades of red and blue that were used as backdrops in advertising photos in the 1950’s. The olive green and harvest gold kitchen appliances of the 1970’s are unmistakable. Dig deep in the closet and something in a very bright yellow or purple (or both) might fall out. It’s probably a shirt that hasn’t seen the light of day since Daddy Bush was president.

As I cut up things like old maps, atlases, vintage postcards and discarded magazines and books my first purpose is just to make a work of art. I work in the present. But, I also understand that I am preserving color palettes that are disappearing.

Some examples of some Palette Preservation can be seen above and much more is at tofuart.com.