A particularly nice surprise came from Nancy Scott Bell, an artist I've particularly admired and who has been a recent influence on my own work of late. As a borderline agoraphobic, I got a good laugh from the stamp on the envelope flap: "Emily Dickinson: Proof that leaving the house is overrated."
Inside one of Nancy's beautifully altered book pages, strikingly tinted and adorned with a band of asemic calligraphy:
But what I was most excited to get were this quartet of Nancy's signature "3-scrappers." I've been fascinated by the beauty of Nancy's randomly-constructed miniature collages since I first saw them.
She often includes her instructions for making your own. I've tried to do it but I lack the discipline to follow instructions, even the ones I give myself. Usually, I start off with three random elements as prescribed, but I end up using that as a starting point, a chance-generated background, as it were, for a more deliberately-constructed collage. I consider that generally a failure on my part, as well as indicative of just how hard it is to do what Nancy does so minimally, and so well.
Here are her instructions:
One of the great treats of mail art is to be able to communicate directly and tangibly with artists you admire--all the moreso when it leads to holding in your hands original work that they created. Thank you Nancy!
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