RawHound Productions

 
This week’s Portland trip included a visit to the studio of RawHound Productions and a sneak peek at their latest projects. In 2025 they won an Audience Choice award at the Portland Festival of Cinema.

The Portland Art Museum

When I travel, I always try to make time to visit local art museums. I especially like to go to museums that are smaller, less well known, etc. I often discover real treasures, from excellent regional work, artists who should be better known and even works from very famous artists that never make the art books and travelling blockbuster museum shows. Santa Barbara, Long Beach, Tucson, Boise, just point me to the art museum.

I get up to Portland now and then but realized it has been 18 years since I visited the Portland Art Museum. The museum has tripled in size since my last visit.  This is an example where more exhibition space is better (that is not always the case).

It is always satisfying to see a lot of local artists featured in a museum. The Inkling Studio show is an excellent showcase of local printmaking.  Mark Rothko was a local artist, but most of the blockbuster work is elsewhere. As an artist, I found seeing some of his early work fascinating. There is a beach scene that reminded me of Chaïm Soutine.  The museum has Soutine’s The Little Pastry Cook — a pleasure to see as we do not have any of his work on display in the Bay Area. The photography of the Kenji Nakahashi was also well curated, it is shown with contemporary Japanese ceramics.

I must be sure not to wait 18 years to go back.

Visiting the Portland Correspondence Coop

On my visit to Portland, I got to attend the Portland Correspondence Coop monthly meeting. It was a real treat.
The meetings are hosted in this amazing place called Cargo. 
Cargo is sort of like an antique mall but for artists and makers.  Instead of antiques, you have booths filled with all kinds of groovy stuff.  Some of the artists represented are even San Francisco refugees.
How I wish we could have a space like this in San Francisco. But alas, pretty much any big warehouse like this would be snapped up by some tech company to make another useless app.   I ❤️ Portland.

City Stickers

Stickers covering the backs of street signs are not unique to any community. It happens in a lot of places. But the stickers themselves are often unique.
Can we create a portrait of a community by just looking at what gets stuck on the street signs, electrical boxes and mailboxes, buildings, etc.?  Well, let’s start with Portland, Oregon and see what we get.

Polenta Post?

How to respond to mail art call for Italy when the theme is “Terra Madre”. Maybe a painting of a map of the world that looks like polenta on a plate.  Is it time for Sunday lunch?

Artist Stamps from Cascadia Art Post

Yesterday was a very good mail day.  Three envelopes and an incredible collection of artist stamps from Jack Lattemann at Cascadia Art Post.  These are part of collaborative series where we sent Jack tickets and other ephemera.  The MUNI transfer and old Fast Pass came from me of course. There was a long postal delay, but it was well worth the wait. 

Airmail Stickers from the California Postal Service

Even though the USPS no longer distributes airmail stickers, you can make your own.  You can even send a batch to Dystatic in Canada, and you will get a bunch sent back to you.

Mail Art Book #2

In June 2022 I completed Mail Art Book #1.  Nearly four years later, the second in the series is finished.
Along with their mail art, many artists include ephemera, stickers, artist stamps and other pieces in their envelopes — and sometimes the envelopes are works of art too. In 2020 I began to repurpose this material in artist books.  I always start with a large, used coffee table book — armed with glue and scissors these 170 pages are the latest results.  I am already looking for another old book to start filling up.

Sailing Away in the Mail

I typically do not use the stamped postcards from the USPS, but when I saw the Schooner Series, I had an idea.  I did not want to paint boats, but this old book was begging to be cut up and collaged. And then I learned about Scrambled Art Co. and their fantastic hole punches to make faux postage.
The results are in the mail…

Postmarked!

The machines at the USPS postmarked the wrong side of the mail art from Thom Courcelle. I like when this happens and mail art is inadvertently authenticated.

Eggs in the Mail

On the way to Hungary for a mail art call.....🥚📬

Year of the Horse

To celebrate the Year of the Horse my new series of mail art uses hand-carved, rubber stamps and was inspired by some of the world’s oldest known horse art. These are on their way to mailboxes around the world.

Guerra e Migranti

 

Mail art on the way to Italy for a call with the theme war and migration.