Wednesday Round Up

Rather than bore you all with random pics of mail art - what's been coming and going through the Tofino post office - perhaps I'll start a once-a-week round up. I had a pretty productive weekend, but other than a pic on Instagram (toughcitywriter), I didn't record them. Here are a few that I did, however:

Above and below, very distinctive mail art from Stan Askew. Loving the use of stamps and stamps (rubber and postage).

Above and below. This is outgoing to Spain. It was in response to a mail art contact who wanted to exchange art related to zodiacs. He's a Sagittarius and I'm Capricorn (but just barely, on the cusp of Sagittarius), so I had a bit of fun with this and cut a few new rubber stamps as well. It was great to have a good excuse to use the Canada Post Signs of the Zodiac stamp series.

This just in from Pamela in San Francisco. Always happy to receive her creative mail and great letters. I must say that although I do enjoy receiving mail and art from other mail artists, it is nice to actually make some connections with people who are like-minded. So thank you for the letters, Pamela!

Above and below from Cascadia Artpost, maker of stunning artistamps. All of those flowers are his designs. And this included a packet of flower seeds, too. Very nice and timely for spring and gardening. 

And I made this for a mail art call at the Lackman Library in Kansas. It was fun to finally use one of the endpapers - complete with circulation slot - from one of the discarded library books I have lying around. This one is from the school just down the road.

And it's always nice to see that my art makes it through. Here are a few posts on received mail: Heebee Jeebeeland, Frips Mail Art, Glenrosa Journeys and Goop Mail Art.

Mail Me Some Art

I've always been interested in things related to letters. I like writing, love receiving mail, have collected stamps on and off (not as a serious philatelist, but as someone who admires the art and enjoys history), and always thought being a mail carrier would be a great job. (I love walking and getting up early. Not so sure it would be as ideal as I imagine though, especially with all of the recent changes at Canada Post.)

Last year, when I started to get more interested in collage and, by extension, participating in mail art, I trolled around trying to figure out how to get started. Good Mail Day was a great primer, of course, and I quickly got myself a copy of that. There are lots of other great sites and resources I found, but one of the first was Karen Isaacson's Mail Me Some Art. This site has lots of open swaps, which I find are great for trying new ideas and techniques, and there is also a spot for informal exchanges with other like-minded mail art/artist types. Like Liberate Your Art, which I wrote about last time, you send in your work and get others in exchange. Here's what I received as part of the exchange for grid postcards.

From Phillip Lerche (too bad it got mucked up in the postal system). Here is his post on the grid cards he made and received. 

From Currie Silver.

From Jellita at Jellita Monotype Prints. 

From Carroll (aka bigmamabird).

Karen is always coming up with great art ideas on Mail Me Some Art. Next up for me? Artistamps. It's the push I've needed to get going on this. Check it out.

Liberate Your Art

Kat, over at Kay Eye Studio, runs an annual "liberate your art" project. Honestly, I can't recall how I came across it - somewhere one night of insomnia perhaps? - but I liked the idea that it pushed you to actually do something with your art. In this case, choose a piece and get it printed so you could send it out as a postcard. Then, you send the postcards to Kate (and arrange for postage), which she then re-distributes.

It was timely for me as I was creating all of these collages and not quite sure what to do with them. (I have some ideas now!) Here is the card that I had printed up:

And here are the cards I received:

From Terri.

From Stacie

From Mary at Uncustomary Art (which is a brilliant name of a site for someone named Mary, don't you think?).

And this, "Layered Autumn" is from the host, Kat. 

I didn't participate in the "blog hop" after the event was over, but here is the blog post on that.  In total, the project "liberated" 1254 pieces of art with 209 artists from 10 countries participating. Thanks, Kat!

Hidden Wolf Within Me: Serendipity

Often when I'm creating a collage it's not until afterwards that I notice serendipity - what I thought was a random word seems to align perfectly with an image or something in the placement of a particular piece balances out another "randomly" placed piece. There was a few things that came together when I did this piece for a mail art call, The Hidden Wolf Within Me, which went to the Philippines.

First, I printed this vintage image of a wolf on a page from a children's dictionary. I used the page with the word wolf on it, but just fed it into the printer without fussing with alignment. 

And this is what resulted. See how wolves aligned just above the eye? Serendipity for sure. 

That was cool, I thought, but then this happened.

Here is the reverse of the envelope (with a packing tape transfer added.) See how the word "within" just happened to be at the top of the page of the dictionary? Serendipity rather than any brilliant planning on my part (although my friend, Rebecca would disagree). 

So I added this. 

Coming and Going

Late last week/last weekend I had a very full few days. The opera in Vancouver (not a common occurrence for us, but my friend was the composer so it was a must; yeah, Tobin!) This was followed by several wonderful visits with dear friends and family then home again (a few extra days off work to make a nice long weekend was a bonus). Sunday there was a bike ride and a surf competition to watch on a sunny day at the beach. And did I mention the mail? It's been a pretty good week of mail. Here's a bit of what's been coming and going.

I am a fan for the bizarre and quirky, so this postcard was right up my alley. This came from the Czech Republic via Postcrossing.

Learning calligraphy is on my "to do" list, so it's always wonderful to receive beautifully addressed mail from Richard in Marseille. (And "secret" mail no less!)

And a very funny zine arrived from Karen, who is a talented and busy artist who runs Mail Me Some Art.

And this arrived recently from "The Punk Bassoon Connection." Love all the eclectic stamps, both postage and rubber.

I haven't been scanning a lot of my outgoing mail lately, but here's one that's going out to Richard. The waits in ferry lineups have been good for making collages lately.

Brain Cell

Not long after I first got started with mail art and joined the International Union of Mail Artists I received a curious - and beautifully lettered - envelope postmarked Japan. It was from Ryosuke Cohen. Inside the envelope was a large sheet of paper:

I didn't really understand it at the moment, but I was the recipient of a sheet from The Brain Cell mail art project. Artists from around the world send Cohen images of their rubber stamp art, artists stamps, and other art and Cohen assembles them into these limited editions of 150. I've received two so far. He also sends along a list of the contributors and I have a goal to work through the list, sending out art. (It will be a slow process!) I also contributed a few of my hand-carved stamps, so we'll see what edition they wind up on.

Here's the second edition I received.

Friends and Faux No. 70

The talented folks over at Tanglecrafts have a great mail art project, called Friends and Faux, where artists attach their artistamps on a specially-designed postcard and the card circulates until it makes it back home to Tanglecrafts headquarters. After embarrassing myself slightly on the blog of the very talented Phillip (aka Finnbadger) where I pretty much begged him to send the card on to me next (how very un-Canadian of me), he was gracious enough to comply. I've sat on it for a month now, humming and hawing about what to do, what to do. Given that I have never actually made an artistamp, I had a bit of humble pie to eat before I got down to business. But, I've sorted it out, at least for now. It would help if I knew my way around a computer better and even had PhotoShop, but I made a stamp from one of my collages and a bit of hand-lettering.

I have plans for others. This one is heading out in the post tomorrow!

Sunday Mornings

I think Sunday mornings might be my favourite time of the week. I am an early riser, so the house is quiet (not that it is ever very noisy!). Sheryl McKay is on CBC radio talking about arts, which is almost always interesting, and I have books or magazines or my iPad or writing/drawing materials nearby. It's looking like a nice day today, so there will be time in the garden before we head to one of my most favourite places for the afternoon. And it's a long weekend, so time for even more of this and perhaps some time on my paddle board tomorrow.

Here's a random round-up of things related to writing, mail art, letters, and the like, but first, I received some mail from mail artist, Torma Cauli, of Budapest, this past week, which was pretty special.

Through Swap-Bot I was part of a "Not Your Mother's Mail Art" swap, which I kind of dig (being subjected to far too many stickers of bunnies and the like, I thought this held promise). I was looking for some inspiration for working with security envelopes and found this gem from Apartment Therapy. And there's more.  Some security envelope fabulousness from artist Sarah Phillips and a variety of ideas for security envelopes here.

Yesterday, on CBC's DNTO (Definitely Not the Opera) had a great show on letters. To listen, go here where you can stream it or download the podcast. There were some great stories of letters that made a difference. I have a letter from the tooth fairy as well. I wrote about it awhile back.

I just downloaded FLOW magazine's ("the magazine for paper lovers") special issue on snail mail onto my iPad. After I finish here, I'm heading there. The app is free and you can find it here.

All for today! Have a great one. 

Weekend Collaging

I stayed up far too late Friday night, but I was feeling very creative. Saturday morning I woke up to a mess, but I kept on going. Here are a few of the results.

I think this might be one of my most favourite collages. Love that warthog. 

Outgoing

A few outgoing collages on envelopes.