Via Sea Turtle Mail

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.

Year of the Rabbit - Happy New Year!

Each year the US Postal Service’s Lunar New Year Stamp inspires me to make some mail art. This time some hand carved rubber stamps for The Year of the Rabbit.

Franked, Stamped and Stamped

I had a stack of old, unused franked postcards from the USPS.   You can still purchase these, but nowadays they are pre-stamped with forever postage.  After rubber stamping these, I then needed to add additional postage from my box of unused, vintage postage stamps

Postmarked or Post-marred?

When you send mail art you always take a chance that it will get roughed up along the way.  Like many artists, I use paper or clear envelopes for more delicate pieces.  When recipients post my handmade postcards online, I have seen some that have been postmarked on both sides.   I know some artists find this frustrating, but there is a side of me that appreciates that authentication.  You know it is genuine mail art when the postmark hits both sides.   That is what happened with some mail art I just received.  Including a portrait piece from Gregg Biggs, a lovely, original watercolor from Margo Hill and the latest sticker remnant collage piece from Heather Ferguson.  

Vote!

A few months ago, when I was using up my horde of old postage stamps, I put aside a pile of American flag stamps.   I envisioned some voting-themed mail art.  Alas, it is even more timely as the trumpists are now trying to destroy the US Postal Service in order to steal the election.  This batch of mail art is on its way.

Mail Art in the Time of Plague

I knew someone would be sending me a plague doctor postcard — I’ve been seeing that image in my head for months.  Of course, I am not the only one drawing masks on postage stamps.  I received a postcard from Gina Visione (1).  Peter Müller (2) reminds us to pray to Saint Corona. Gregg Biggs (3) latest offering from the Museum of Unclaimed Ephemera features two ladies who are all dressed up with nowhere to go.  And the latest piece from Kathy Barnett (4) just cracked me up — thank you!

The volume of mail art has unsurprisingly declined.  I have read that the movement of mail between some countries is barely happening if at all. 

 

I have avoided trips to check my post office box.  San Francisco has closed some streets to through traffic.  I now can walk all the way up Page Street to Clayton Street and easily get to my post office branch and practice social distancing. I can order stamps online or wait to buy them from the postal staff.  They are also wearing masks and are relatively safely behind new Plexiglas shields.  

The problem is the narrow passage to my post office box way in the back.  It’s a room where social distancing is impossible.  The few times I have gone up there, I have always had to ask someone to leave the post office so I can get to my box.  Some of us go in, key at the ready, open, mail in bag, shut and lock and get out the door.  But then there are the other post office boxholder types.  Every post office has them.  The post office is their reading and sorting room where they need to spend 20 minutes examining every piece of mail, including random junk mail, before they exit the building.  No pandemic will get them to change their habits.  I get glared at every time I ask one of them leave.  At this point, I do not apologize for offending them.  I imagine long hallways in their Victorian flats with piles and piles of old magazines and newspapers — because one day, maybe, they will need to disturb the silver fish and find that October 1983 issue of The Nation.

Stay Home, Make Art, Wave the Flag – Day 29

Today some pages of flag waving.  Having sorted through thousands of postage stamps, I can say the frequency of putting the flag on stamps is something uniquely American.  Sure, other countries have their flag on some stamps, but no country uses theirs so often as the United States. Personally, I’ve always been the sort of customer who asks for commemoratives and only buys flag stamps in a pinch.

A Postal Ghost Story

This is a ghost story for Halloween. But, if you expect to be scared, you will be disappointed. Most ghosts are simply there. They are a presence some of us are sensitive to, and just that, a presence. We recognize those times when we do not feel quite alone. In some instances, those presences seem negative and hostile, but most ghost stories are fairly ordinary. I could tell some frightening tales, but they will be for another day. After decades in San Francisco, I can attest to creepy Victorians and haunted offices in former brothels, just to get things started.

This ghost story goes back to Buffalo, New York to an old house on Norwood Avenue. It was the first home my parents owned. When the house was built in 1896, it was essentially a tract home, identical to the row of houses on the block. It its day, it would be what we now call a McMansion. By the time my family moved in, it was 1969 and the house had been altered and renovated a few times. Maids’ quarters adjacent to an attic were expanded into an apartment. Walls built, walls knocked down, stairs blocked off. There was an attempt to remove and cover much of the Victoriana when one owner aimed for some 1940s Beverly Hills glamor. That said, it was their huge wall of built-in book cases that sold my parents on the house.

The house could be spooky, but I would never say scary. The cellar was dominated by a massive, ancient furnace. The previous owner, an antique dealer, did things like board-up or nail windows shut to thwart burglars. He even added a huge steel door. In 1969, the cellar was still a warren of original rooms for things like laundry and storing canned goods. The cellar came with a pile of debris under the stairs. When my father began to remove the debris, he discovered it was covering an opening to an old well. The pile was immediately put back on top of the hole and remained there. 

The attic was equally mysterious. I don’t believe anyone ever explored the crawlspace above the apartment. Some things are best left undisturbed.

We lived there about eight years, a brief period in the house’s history. But, as my childhood home, I remember it well. The house made a big impression. I still dream about it. Now that we can access so much minutiae online, my curiosity lead me to search. With old census records and directories one can see who used to live in a house years ago. When you find the names of former residents, a quick search of genealogy websites might even yield photos.

The place on Norwood saw a lot of occupants. By the 1920s rooms were let and the house started to be carved up into small apartments. The resident that captured my attention, and imagination, was Barton Molyneux. He and his family lived there in 1910.

Barton Molyneux was a successful inventor, not quite famous, but he did invent machines to sort mail. Before his inventions, mail could only be sorted by hand. With his machines, the postal service could process and then deliver mail much faster. As an artist who makes and sends mail art, I felt a connection. 

One can’t say for sure if Barton was one of the presences who remained in the house. This could just be a story with an interesting coincidence, or, we can wonder, can ghosts play a role in the choices we go on to make in our lives?  

Shark Mail

Last week’s trip to the post office included the purchase of some of the newest stamps from the U.S. Postal Service.  The new set of Sharks are inspirational.  Today’s mail art on the way is a series of Shark Mail postcards — each has hand painted fin cruising above the surf.