A Post Office Box Full of Pink

The deadline to send you art for the Pink Mail Art Show in Sacramento is September 30th.  This week the post office box was overflowing with the mail you see here.  You can see the pieces in detail in the flickr album.  The show opens in Sacramento on November 13th, 2015. 

Landscaped Postcards

What happens when you take something like ordinary, unused, old postcards?  You can enhance them by adding some paint or “landscape” them.  Now you have a new round of mail art to send out today.

Armin Hansen might be the best artist you have never heard of

Shark Fishers, Armin Hansen

Yesterday a friend and I paid a visit to one of the cities with the most happening art scenes in California.  No, sorry L.A. it wasn’t you and yes San Francisco, we know how much you love yourself, but no, you’ve been pushing all the art out.  But a 90-minute drive away is Sacramento.  We took some time to explore some of the open studios at the Verge Center for the Arts.  This weekend was Sacramento’s big open studios event and we barely scratched the surface.  Sacramento still has room for working artists to have studios to make and show art.  I also got see the new space that will be hosting this year’s Pink Week show as well as the upcoming Pink Mail Art show I am curating in November.

Our main goal was to get to the Crocker Museum to see the exhibit Armin Hansen: The Artful Voyage.  I had read the book before seeing the show and familiarized myself with Hansen’s work.  The catalog is beautiful, yet the printed pages cannot really do his work justice.  He was one of those artists whose work you truly have to see in person.  The museum website has a few images and the review in the Sacramento Bee has some additional images to give you an idea (the image shown above is from permanent collection and not part of the special exhibit).

One could describe Armin Hansen as the west coast’s Winslow Homer.  It would give you an idea of what to expect if you were unfamiliar with his work.  But it might be better to put Hansen in a league with Herman Melville. Melville could write about life on the sea so well, in part, due to his experiences as a crewman on merchant ships and a whaler.  Like Melville, Hansen was able to approach the sea as someone who had worked it – as a fisherman.  Many of his seascapes were not painted with a view from the shore but instead from how it would look far out in Monterey Bay.  I kept looking at them from across the room and they almost started to move.  It took me me back to being out in a small boat on rough water – something I have not experienced for decades.    The most surprising thing about Armin Hansen is that he is not more famous.  After seeing his work, I would expect he would be one of those American artists that most everyone has heard of — a name in a category with Georgia O’Keeffe, Edward Hopper, Andy Warhol, etc..  Yes, he is that good.  But alas, the bias against West Coast artists by the New Yorkerati has been going on for over a century.

There is always art to see in Sacramento, but if you want to discover Armin Hansen, you have go to get up there before the show closes on October 11.

Flaschenpost

This summer I sent my Bocksbeutel postcard (above) off to Roland Halbritter in Nuedlingen Germany for the mail art call (see more here).  Bocksbeutels are those green glass, “flattened” wine bottle often used for some German wines.  In return for my mail art I received a sheet of Bocksbeutel stamps (below).  

Bigger and Blue

Tahoe Collagescape, mixed media on board, 24” x 36”

The latest work in my collagescape series is also the biggest piece so far (and I want to go bigger).  Anyone who has visited Lake Tahoe in person knows there is an intense, rich blue palette found there that is not quite like any other lake.  After painting layers of blue on paper and cutting up the pieces, I reassembled the lake (it’s somewhere close to 20,000 pieces).

Tahoe Collagescape (detail)

Letters to Myself

We are fortunate in San Francisco to have an excellent public library system.  It is one of the best in the United States.  Among the many great things they do, is act as a venue for special exhibits, large and small, on a wide-ranging variety of topics. 

The current show, Letters to Myself, at the Main Library is outstanding.  It is a collection of artist and calligrapher Alan A. Blackman’s hand drawn and addressed first day of issue envelopes he made and sent to himself over a period of more than 40 years.  Unlike the first day covers that stamp collectors normally receive, each envelope is a one-of-a-kind work of art designed by the artist.  He mailed them to himself and his son with the postage stamps and first day postmarks.  You do not need to have any interest in stamp collecting or even calligraphy to appreciate this amazing, museum-quality show.   

The show is up until October 11, 2015 and is simply a don’t miss!

art + recycle = art

While I work on a series of mail art pieces I often have them all taped down to a piece of cardboard.  Over time, layer upon layer of paint that spills over the edges builds up.  I reuse the cardboard many times.  This week it was time to recycle a piece of cardboard (see below).  What better way to do it, then to cut it up and turn the pieces into postcards?  This series of 18 is going out today.