Brains!

Using some brain power to carve some rubber stamps.  This first round is a collaboration with the Lithuanian artist Mindaugas Žuromskas (he did the painted paper).   These are heading around the world in the mail — more to come soon. 

End of Summer Mail Bag

 

Get busy, leave town, and don’t go to the post office for a few weeks and the box was bursting with new mail art.    Zines + mail art, altered postcards, rubber stamping, fabric sample collages, Fleur’s ongoing documentation of Oakland public art, Kathy’s moving pieces and a more patrons of the Museum of Unclaimed Ephemera.  Some of Kathy Barnett’s pieces get hung on my apartment door to entertain my young neighbors.   Here is a list of the artist shown this month: 

1. Eberhard Janke - Germany
2. MiM – Virginia 
3. Jean-Philippe Gilliot – Belgium 
4. Valdor – Catalonia/Spain
5. Pia Zaragoza – California
6. Debra Mulnick – Idaho
7. Carolyn Oord (aka Kerosene) – Québec/Canada
8. Rani Goel – California 
9. Fleur Helsingor – California
10. Jon Foster – North Carolina 
11. William Mellott – Taiwan 
12. Skooter Fein – California 
13. Patti Wren & Paula Currie – California
14. Margo Hill – California
15. Meral Agar – Turkey 
16. Kathy Barnett – Missouri
17. Gregg Biggs – Museum of Unclaimed Ephemera – California

The Thorn Birds

It has been more than a year and I still am working on my Chaekgeori-inspired series.   

I usually do not paint the book titles in detail, yet many of the books in these paintings are still recognizable.  Viewers spot a few books they have on their own shelves and many of us read the same books.  In my latest painting you might notice a copy of The Thorn Birds — a ubiquitous title on the bookshelves of all moms of a certain generation.  Yes, these are my mom’s books and things.  And even though she has downsized (many of my parent’s books are on my shelves now), a true reader can’t help but fill a bookcase.  Also, like many of the paintings in this series, small pieces of my art appear on the shelves (look for the slice of cabbage).

Dahlia Time

In a world gone mad, one of the ways I cope is nice long walks to Golden Gate Park.  This time of the year the dahlias are in bloom. Beautiful and inspirational.  This weekend was spent carving rubber stamps for a series of dahlia-themed postcards.

Collage Dreams

 

For many years I have collected and held on to a great amount of ephemera to use one day in various collages.  This has included maps, postage stamps and hundreds of postcards.   More recently I have been using up a lot of what I have saved for decades.  Much of the material has ended up in artist books.  My latest artist book, Collage Dreams, incudes 20 handmade, or as one now says, analog collages.   Each collage is 10.5” wide x 11” high and made entirely from the contents of postcard booklets dating from 1910 to 1950.

 

When I started these collages with the goal of creating an artist book, I did it without an intentional agenda.   This project was simply taking images out of their original context and arranging them to make pleasant and even amusing landscapes and cityscapes.  Yet, as this series of collages neared completion, I began to suspect that I might be recreating some of the surreal, fragmented places that I keep seeing when I dream.   I need to ask myself whether some of my dreams are about collaged places I will create instead of actual places I will one day visit.

A book is now available that includes all the collages.   Some of the images are also available as prints.  

10 Years of the S.F. Correspondence Co-Op

The first time I went to a San Francisco Correspondence Co-Op meeting was the group’s first anniversary party — back in 2012.  Here we are nine years later, and the co-op is now 10 years old.  We missed having our party in 2020 and finally had out first in-person gathering this weekend, safely, outdoors in a quiet, financial district park.

Every time we meet, one of us does an artist stamp to be shared with co-op members.  Many keep their stamps in special passports.   For our 10^th anniversary we did something different.   29 other co-op members sent me artwork that was then turned into a set of two commemorative sheets of artist stamps.  Here is our very cooperative effort.

Envelopes and Postcards and More

The mail art that arrived this month included quite a few envelopes trying to upstage their contents.  Marina Salmaso sent a handmade envelope that needed to be disassembled to reveal a collage celebrating the 100^thAnniversary of Joseph Beuys’ birth.   Thea Albert’s mail art needed to be assembled — and the box now is on one of my bookshelves.    The mail shown here includes: 

1. Jon Foster – North Carolina 
2. Carolyn Oord (aka Kerosene) – Québec/Canada
3. Jennifer Utter – California
4. Virgo – Russia 
5. Deble Faulkner – California 
6. Chocolatine et stooby – France 
7. Serse Luigetti – Italy
8. Meral Agar – Turkey 
9. Margo Hill – California
10. William Mellott – Taiwan 
11. Gregg Biggs – Museum of Unclaimed Ephemera – California
12. Maria Quiroga – Argentina 
13. Marina Salmaso – Denmark
14. Thea Albert – Washington State