No sooner do I think that I'm beginning to get a handle on what mail-art is then I'm sent staggering drunkenly back to the proverbial--and literal--drawing board my dazzled eyes newly opened (yet again) to the infinitude of possibilities of what you can do--if, as Carl Jung once wrote, only you knew it. Today's instructional came in the form of this absolutely delightful package from artist Vizma Bruns who hails from the land of kangaroos, koalas, platypi, and other dadaistic anomalies...Australia.
Here is the front of the envelope Vizma sent me as well as a card representing a "layering experiment with my almost dead printer." I love the offset Warholian screenprint effect of this piece. It's cooler, creepier, more complex than if it were done "the right way," meaning, with all the lines matching and the printer working perfectly. It's the little accidents that creep into a work that, I find, make it unique, the random elements that produce revelations, insights, surprises, and that catch the occasional ghost which always avoids a more carefully controlled effort. After all, if you know exactly what you're going to do before you do it and then you execute that plan to a "t," well, congratulations, but what have you learned? To me, the best art, the most meaningful art, is also a record of the artist's journey in the act of creation, which, in effect, recreates that journey for the viewer.
Above you see the back of Vizma's brilliantly colored envelope--a packet of virtual sunshine--a repurposed "gift tag," and a small pocket envelope folded from a Roma tourist map. All of it bright and cheerful, a kind of mental confetti. Below is a postcard collage titled "We are cool chicks." A wonderful striped effect that reminds me of a rolling television picture serves as the background, the kind of thing you don't seem to see anymore, now that I think of it. Maybe televisions aren't prone to that sort of malfunction anymore? I miss that rolling television effect of my childhood (which might explain a lot) and wish I could get my television to do it again since it would be better, more visually and mentally stimulating, I think, than most of the actual shows that are broadcast--a kind of Fluxus/Dada TV.
Beneath the postcard is a little doodad that I found in one of the pockets of the handmade notebook you'll see pictured further below. There are all kinds of little stamps and pictures and papers hidden throughout Vizma's mail-art, the discovery of which, as you can imagine, is part of the fun. I'm still not sure I've found everything yet. It's a little like Christmas morning in an envelope.
Next is Vizma's first mail art zine. I've unfolded it so that you can see all 8 pages--and also so I could figure out how she did it without staples, glue, or thread. I've seen this kind of thing described in books and on the internet but I'm so inept at following instructions of these kinds...origami, knitting, tai chi, you name it, basically anything that requires me to know and coordinate my right hand with my left...that it's just hopeless. So it was great to have an actual example of a staple-free zine in my own human paws. But after unfolding it, examining it, scanning it, I couldn't figure out how to put it back together again and was nearly reduced to frustrated tears until my husband arrived and I thrust it at him, saying "Can you figure this out?!" Fortunately he did and I'll be making my first 8-page staple-freemail-art zine soon (so long as my husband is around to show me--again--how to fold it). In my excitement at learning how it's done I almost forget to enjoy Vizma's fun, non-sequential, exuberantly creative zine:
Finally here is a beautiful little notebook of assorted stitched papers decorated with stamps and stickers and complete with an interior pocket; its, perfect as Vizma writes, for "lists, mail art, tabs, plotting revenge, whatever!!"
Thank you so much Vizma for this amazing work!
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