My Blog List

Saturday, May 31, 2014


=mail art received=



::envelope front and back (I believe the original image on the back has been appropriated but the way it's been altered transforms it into something extraordinarily beautiful. The informal & spontaneous Buddha image on the front is totally charming.):: 


::"Dance of the Wind" and "A Breath of Peace."


::this one goes on my home altar::


::Lorella Castagnini, Genova, Italy::

An envelope filled with a wonderful array of peaceful, healing images—drawn, appropriated, & artfully altered. Nourishment for the heart, body, mind & soul. The more I look at these materials, the better I feel.  


Friday, May 30, 2014

=mail art received=






::Claudia McGill, Wyncote, PA:: 

One thing I love about Claudia's work—aside from the fact that it is so luminously beautiful—is that it is so uniquely and distinctively her own. That is not to say that I don't see echoes, intentional or not, between her work and the work of other artists, but that she gives the impression of having worked through whatever has influenced her to create an entirely new visual language. 

Her hand-folded and hand-painted envelope is a mini-masterpiece, with its bold gestural marks and brilliant use of white space. The overall effect is light and airy, reminiscent, to me, of Motherwell, but with a lighter, more colorful touch.

The three artist trading cards are further evidence of Claudia's mastery of small spaces. Each card manages to become it's own complete world in miniature. The card at the top left, with it's figurative cut-out, reminds me of Matisse. The other two bear traces of cubism, but reinterpreted into a brighter, more suggestively abstract and visually appealing form than I usually associate with traditional cubism.

I should admit that I've taken liberty with the card at the bottom. Claudia indicates that it should be shown opposite to the way I've shown it. I know it's rather an inexcusable  thing to do, but I hope I'll be excused. I find the piece so much more personally suggestive this way.

Filled with color, light, and lightness, with its varied repetition of circle-motifs and dancing figurative abstractions, Claudia's work has a healing quality and a sense of calm that is zen-like. It invites you into its small charmed spaces of peaceful. It's a good place to be! Thank you Claudia!  

=missing pieces=



Thursday, May 29, 2014

=fun with bills=



::because theyre "just bills" i like to practice techniques on the envelopes. Here I'm trying out the blotted line technique I saw in a small instructional film strip at the Warhol museum last week. I never could figure it out from written descriptions but seeing it done helped--up to a point. Thankfully my husband was there to explain what I was watching (and missing)::



::Paying bills can be really unpleasant, especially when the bill collector is unfair, unreasonable, and impatient—but it doesn't have to be!  A dozen magic markers can make almost any task a dozen times more fun.::

Wednesday, May 28, 2014





=mail art received=



::Moan Lisa, Iowa City, IA::

Visually stunning, drenched in elusive symbolism, idolatrous & ironic. The more you look at it, the more you don't see. I love ML's collage work.

=mail art received=




::Richard Canard, Carbondale, IL::

This one had me at the pig.  As far as I'm concerned it's as airtight as a mathematical equation: Pigs + postcards=great mail art.

=mail art received=



::Richard Canard, Carbondale, IL::

As usual with RC's work, a profound, rueful and bittersweet nugget of truth is hidden inside the candy. There's something absurd and therefore quintessentially human about complaining that one has too much freedom to do as one pleases. Crybaby Tears, indeed: extra sour.

=mail art received=



::from Jon Foster, Winston-Salem, NC::

Returning home yesterday from an extended road trip to Florida, I found several pieces of mail-art waiting for me, including this surprise package from Jon Foster: a treasure-box of wonderful ephemera, including cards, buttons, stamps, & stickers. The box and it's contents taken together is a piece of art in itself—a kind of time-capsule like the ones we recently saw in the Warhol museum. I'm enjoying just taking the stuff out of the box and spreading it out on the studio floor, examining the contents a piece at a time and in their always-changing random combinations. Something new seems to emerge every time.

Thank you Jon for this box of magic!


=4 small collages=



::handmade crap paper, thread, foil, ink & water mounted on 5x7 inch index cards::

Sunday, May 25, 2014

=after warhol=



::sketched these with markers while taking a sit-down break at the Andy Warhol museum in Pittsburgh this afternoon::



::here they are photoshopped—a technique for producing variations that can be considered analogous to screenprinting as Warhol utilized it::


  
::and one more::

=marks of weakness, marks of woe=


"I wander thro each chartered street...
 And mark in every face I meet
 Marks of weakness, marks of woe"
 —William Blake

::left on the Rachel Carson Bridge, Pittsburgh, PA::

Saturday, May 24, 2014