Wear a Mask!

A new series of mail art using hand-carved rubber stamps

Eyes in the Mail

In a bit of shared artistic vision, some of the mail art I recently received featured eyes and I just emphasized eyes in my holiday mailing.  Ans Theo Nelson is turning some of the mail art he receives into small, one-of-a-kind zines and then redistributing the work.  As I have been filling art scrapbooks  with mail art, this idea is tempting. I love maps and I love public transportation, So Karen Clowney Scott’s bear made out of New York City MTA Maps is perfect. And, it is always a treat to get an envelope of mail art from Cuan Miles.

1. Debra Mulnick – Idaho
2. William Mellott – Taiwan 
3. Samantha Price – New Hampshire
4. Lubomyr Tymkiv - Ukraine 
5. Robin Sparrow — New Zealand 
6. Karen Clowney Scott – New York 
7. Theo Nelson (Republic of Whimsy) – Canada
8. Cuan Miles – South Africa

Fall Mail

 

Returned from some travel to see a great deal of mail art waiting for me.   Some very small mail art from Amy Irwen, Kathy Barnett sent a movable little frog, and Mindaugas Žuromskas is stenciling paper made from receipts that have been pasted together.  Here is some of the recent mail shown:

1. R.F. Côté — Canada
2. Fleur Helsingor - California 
3. Peter Müller – Germany
4. Lubomyr Tymkiv - Ukraine 
5. Jokie X. Wilson – California
6. Amy Irwen – Minnesota 
7. Bonniediva – Illinois 
8. Sally Wassink – California 
9. Ed Giecek – Washington State
10.  Kathy Barnett – Missouri
11.    
12.  Charles Kremenak – California 
13. Keith Chambers – California 
14. Mikel Untzilla – Euskadi/Spain 
15. Mindaugas Žuromskas – Lithuania 

Summer Mail Wrap-Up

 

 

 

A summer of making art and travel is wrapping up and it is time to review some of the recent mail I have received.  I love those big envelopes of collages and prints from Eastern Europe sent by Virgo and Mindaugas Žuromskas.  An envelope and note from Egg Mail Art curator Eva Mosonyi even had a Hungarian postage stamp which featured some eggs she made (I am impressed).  And how did Thea Hollister know I have always loved the Eurythmics?  This Summer’s mail art included the following:

1. Marina Salmaso– Denmark
2. Fleur Helsingor- California 
3. Virgo– Russia 
4. William Mellott– Taiwan 
5. Bonniediva – Illinois 
6. Wabi Sabi Sews – California
7. Gregg Biggs – Museum of Unclaimed Ephemera – California
8. Mindaugas Žuromskas – Lithuania 
9. Heather Ferguson – California
10. Dori Singh – California 
11. Eva Mosonyi– Hungary
12. Peter Müller – Germany
13. Thea Hollister — Washington State 
14. Maria Quiroga – Argentina 

Post-Vacation Summer Mail

I returned from a trip to Mexico to find a post office box stuffed with fun things.  Including some zines that will force me to work even more on my Spanish.  I truly appreciate the way Valdor compiles the mail art he receives and sends out these zines.  It’s a lot of work, not to mention the cost.  Kathy Barnett continues to outdo herself with these interactive, moveable pieces.  The most recent is like a school cafeteria lunch at the aquarium. The latest characters from the Museum of Unclaimed Ephemera arrived, they were a bit roughed up by some postal machinery.  And some of my Surreal Baseball pieces are returning to me with some re-working.  This Summer’s mail art (so far) includes the following:

1. Dori Singh – California 
2. Gregg Biggs – Museum of Unclaimed Ephemera – California
3. Lorella Castagnini – Italy 
4. Fleur Helsingor- California 
5. Carolyn Oord (aka Kerosone) - Québec/Canada 
6. Bonniediva – Illinois 
7. Debra Mulnick – Idaho
8. Orlando Nelson Pacheco Acuña  – Chile 
9. Sagebrush Moderne – California 
10. Kathy Barnett – Missouri
11. Peter Müller – Germany
12. Valdor – Catalonia/Spain
13. Serse Luigetti – Italy
14. Mindaugas Žuromskas – Lithuania 

Low Tech High Tech Mail

In 1996 the U.S. Postal Service issued a Computer Technology stamp to celebrate the 50^thAnniversary of ENIAC (the first electronic computer for general use). The U.S. Postal Service had Nancy Skolos and Tom Wedellcreate the first postage stamp designed entirely using computers. In that same year, email began to out-pace pieces of snail mail sent in the U.S. 

Recently I was given a sheet of those postage stamps and immediately started working on a piece of mail art to put them to good use.  Low tech, hand-carved, rubber stamps resulted in a series of 40 postcards.  It might seem like a contradiction using low tech postcards to commemorate a high tech postage stamp, but mail artists are not afraid to communicate via email and share the mail they receive online. It is not low tech vs. high tech, but rather low tech and high tech.

rubber stamps + patterns = mail art

This weekend the project was all about hand carving rubber stamps. This stack is on the way in the mail.

Printing Death Valley

 

I believe the last time I was carving out linoleum and making block prints was when I was student.  Maybe it was the visible geologic time machine of Death Valley that inspired me after last weekend’s trip to the desert.  This one comes from a long morning hike way back into Mosaic Canyon – one of my favorite places in the national park.

Pasadena Highlights

However you add up the numbers, the Los Angeles metropolitan area has somewhere around 18 million people.  And when a city has that many diverse people, many from all over the world, it is hard to be bored.  There is no shortage of interesting things and urban exploration opportunities in L.A. — even if some freeway time is involved.  I find that I-hate-L.A. San Francisco provincialism so tiresome.

Today’s L.A. adventure included Glendale and Pasadena, a mission I had never visited, a delightful little Polish restaurant and a trip to a delicious Armenian bakery for dessert.  But the main goal of the day was a return to a favorite museum – the Pasadena Museum of California Art.

I’ve seen a number Gustave Baumann prints on trips to New Mexico but this was my first opportunity to see his lesser-known California work.  I’ll spare you my poor snapshots when you can review the exhibit brochure here.  It was a nice surprise seeing a view of my own neighborhood in San Francisco circa 1930.  The show also includes some of his wood blocks and press (see above). 

The Baumann show is one of the three exhibits at the museum right now that includes Joseph Kleitsch’s paintings and Interstitial, a multi-artist installation of sculpture including my personal favorite, Joel Otterson’s American Portable Pottery Museum (shown above).

All three show are up until August and worth a visit for your upcoming L.A. trips.