Exchanges and Returns

Mail art goes out and mail art comes in.  Quite a few responses have been arriving in recent weeks, including these:

1. Jemma Pine completed a mail art exchange form New Zealand.
2. Some collage fish and colored fibers on a piece from Meral Agar in Istanbul.
3. A photo collage from Marina Salmaso in Denmark.
4. Pia Zaragoza sent a piece that features a Michael Jackson and Priscilla Presley rubber stamp.
5. Jane Gravois is participating in a global “heart exchange.”
6. Dean Marks (aka Artist-in-Seine) feels sorry for getting carried away.  There is no need to apologize for too much art.
7. A piece from my Remove-and-Pass series went around the world.  First to Greece and then to Taiwan where William Mellott added an envelope of collage fodder and some nice ATCs before sending it all back to me in San Francisco.
8. And finally, R.F. Côté participated in my Remove-and-Pass series and returned a piece.  I can’t wait to finds out where the rest of it went.

Thanks for all the fun stuff, soon more mail art will be on its way out.

Creeks and Dunes 16

Last Friday a friend and I took a little drive to Pescadero and back. I love how you can get just minutes south of Pacifica on Route 1 and quickly feel like you have driven hours and hours away from a big city.  Pescadero has always been a favorite quick escape. The purpose of this trip was some photography or an ongoing project.   In the meantime I could not resist another quick series of 16 4”x4” paintings using the photos.  They include places like San Gregorio Creek and Pescadero Marsh.

April Mail

It’s been a college-o-rama in recent days arriving in my PO Box.  Here are some of the latest arrivals:

1. Returns have been coming back from my Remove-and-Pass series, Jennifer Utter’s was the first to arrive.
2. Angelique Evan’s spring greeting incorporated a peep – you can never go wrong with peep-art. 
3. Kerosene’s sturdy piece made its way across the continent from Québec.
4. Diane Keys sent a new add-n-pass as well as this piece featuring the windy meats.
5. Leap Year Mail from Dean Marks the Artist-in-Seine.  It’s always a challenge to find the actual postage stamp that was used for this piece.
6. Angela Behrendt responded to my Remove-and-Pass series with some beer and, are those hops-based costumes, dancers.
7. Bad Wolf Mail Art from Amy Barstow.
8. Julie Crossman sent a postcard about her art installation at the Exploratorium in San Francisco.
9. Brooke Cooks sent some mail art about Greg and a dog.
10. Carol Thomas sent an envelope full of goodies that included a response to the  Remove-and-Pass series on one side and a fish with a hidden fortune on the other side. 
11. Designer Cliff Roxburgh sent some one of his mini-polaroid postcards featuring some “public art I found in NYC” with the hope I would have a way to improve on it.
12. And finally, Robin Sparrow sent a postcard from New Zealand.  It included a slide of some vintage Kiwi school kids.  Is one of them Robin?  After it got dark I realized the postage stamp featuring a glowworm cave – glows in the dark! Just another reason why New Zealand is awesome!

Thank you everyone for the mail, more going out soon….

Collected Letters at the Asian Art Museum

San Francisco’s Asian Art Museum is celebrating its 50^th Anniversary with events and exhibits.  The highlight so far has to be the new piece they acquired by the Chinese artist Liu Jianhua. The work is titled Collected Letters and is an installation of porcelain letters from the Latin alphabet as well as Chinese characters.  The letters are suspended in an alcove on the second floor loggia.  They are adjacent to cases of Chinese porcelain from various periods.  The loggia is one of the areas in the museum that most retains the feel of the public library that was the original purpose of the building.  The upper walls have literary quotes carved into the stonework.  Above Collected Letters there is a proverb from the King James Bible: “A soft answer turneth away wrath but grievous words stir up anger.”  On it’s own, Collected Letters is a great piece, but this particular placement in the museum might be the first time when the  Asian Art Museum has truly installed a work that bridges the gap between an early 20^th Century library and a museum dedicated to Asian art. 

Bunny Invasion in San Francisco

Under the watchful eye of Abraham Lincoln, Australian artist Amanda Parer’s installation titled Intrude has arrived in Civic Center Plaza across from City Hall.  It looks like the five, large inflatable bunnies are trying to blend in with the blob-like, white electric cars parked on the street — but you can’t miss them.  They are amusing, and just a little menacing.   The only things missing would be hundreds of ordinary, white balloons scattered all over the plaza as “bunny droppings” — considering all the poo on our sidewalks, it seems the thing to do.  The bunnies are only around until April 25, 2016 and worth a look.