Mail Art #33

 

Welcome back. 

I had just finished all of the envelopes of my last post and decided I needed to take a few days off. I have so many other projects I am working on--and I need to work on the house. I was getting close to being caught up. Mail art could wait.

Then I got a piece of mail addressed to me from a total stranger, Judi Kauffman, who goes by the name of November-May. Oh no... Just what I didn't need--someone else writing to me.

There was no note enclosed, jusr a piece of folded over cardboard. Opening it, I was surprised to see some horror-ish (gothic) rubber stamps. 

Somehow between my kitchen, the desk in my bedroom, and back to the kitchen, the female rubber stamp figure disappeared. It must have fallen from the cardboard it was inside of and bounced off into the debris (You do not want to know...) in my bedroom. I've retraced my steps many times looking for it. It's hiding. (Grr...) I'll hopefully find it someday--but the other images are stamped below. It turns out that Judi Kauffman is a friend of Coco Muchmore's. She'd received a ton of rubber stamps annonymously and shared the wealth. Coco says she doesn't want to correspond, but I'll send her something anyway as a thank you...then probably send the stamps off to others. 

I found the female figure. She'd bounced and was hiding underneath an old-fashioned ice box in which I store my wine in the kitchen. Naughty girl.

TALES OF THE DEAD: This is what I came up with for her. Eh... I wish I'd used a more colorful character in the center. It's all so lifeless and drab. I tried to use one of the stamp images she sent. The page is the biggest. Instead of stamping it here, I just cut out the stamped image from above and pasted it on here. The final result is boring, but I tried. Thank you again, Judi...

Hold the phone! 12 hours later and I was ready to take this to the post office...and I just couldn't. It needed more pizazz! I put a colorful screaming woman in place of the black and white one. To cover parts of the original image I stuck in a skull and a "starts today" tag. I also added a few more skulls to fill it out a bit more. I'm still NOT wild about it, but I think it's better, maybe?  Hmm. 

Remeber that poster I made for (Tiki With) Ray's Tiki Goth Club Halloween Party? It is back on the blog. It's not a big deal, but I finally got the 28x18 print (one of only two made) framed. 

I also got the original 11x17 poster I made framed. Ha! I can now say that I have a Monster-A-GoGo original! I have the 11x17 print Ray had made for me, too. (I have no idea how many of those he made.) However, I'm not sure I'll frame it. Do I really need three of them in my house? Hmm.

You may have noticed that this posting has taken a long time to get up. That's because I have not been feeling well for a long while. In the evenings, if I watch a movie, I invariably do something else while watching. I'll work on mail art, cut things out for future mail art, write postcards, etc. But the last week or so...I just couldn't do anything except sit. That left me disgusted with myself as so much time was wasted doing nothing. Maxima Strange's Goth Emporium assembly zine project will ultimately have 13 issues. Although she is only a little more than halfway through the project, I had completed 12 of the 13 already. (She'd given me the themes early.) I knew what I wanted to do for my final entry. (The theme is "13".) I printed up the images and just sat cutting and pasting until they were done. Since I already had it worked up in my head, it was a no brainer...

I still didn't feel all that fab while making them, but I couldn't sit and just do nothing any longer. I'm glad they are done. I'll now have participated in all 13 of the Goth Emporium zines. Hooray!

Avery Ayers Berry is a high school art teacher in Kansas. If you'll recall, last year I was making envelopes to send to students who'd be learning about mail art. They were students from her class. She sent me this photo of hers in a Christmas card. How very nice.

IT'S 13 O'CLOCK: I was just going to send the envelope version of the 13 project to Maxima. I haven't sent her a piece of mail in a while. However, when I saw how many people I "owed" mail to, I just decided to go with the next person on the list, Avery Ayers Berry. I liked how the cards came out, but I like this envelope version even better. This was another no-brainer. I'd printed up extra everything for cards, knowing I'd make this, too. The background was already glued on the envelope. I just added one tag line and a few other tidbits I had laying around and voila!

HONEY, I SHRUNK MY HEAD: Although I have several people I need to make mail for, my friend (Tiki With) Ray Wyland recently received an amazing honor. The movie industry has its Hollywood Walk of Fame and Graumann's Chinese Theatre. Music and various sports have their halls of fame. But in the tiki world, what is there? For those that "have arrived", their shrunken head (or at least a likeness of their shrunken head) is created and put on display in a case at Golden Tiki in Las Vegas. Just a week or so ago as I write this, Ray was one of the recipients of this silly but impressive honor. As soon as I heard about it, the idea for this envelope popped into my head. The execution, however, leaves a lot to be desired. Oh well. I hope Ray likes it. I was going to put off doing it--but once it was in my head I had to do the dang thing. I couldn't get it out of my mind. It's done now. NEXT!

When he received it, he posted a picture of himself with it.

THE GHOSTS OF HODGMAN HALL: I have a medical appointment coming up in just over a week in Anacortes. Jan Hodgman, who I have sent things to a few times, lives there. I have long thought of asking to meet her for lunch or something. This past fall, another mail artist came through the area and wanted to meet up with me. I told him I was not available on two dates during his visit. As (bad) luck would have it, he messaged just when my family was getting together to celebrate my nephew's 20th birthday. Argh, We made plans to meet later, but then he backed out claiming exhaustion and being on East Coast time. No worries. Later I found out that during the day, he had met up with Jan Hodgman for lunch in Anacortes. Double argh! Had I known, I could have met them BOTH for lunch in Anacortes (about 45 minutes away) and still made it back for my nephew's birthday thang. Drat! So...I'm going to send her something quickly and invite her to lunch. If she gets this in time and she shows up--hooray! If not, well...dining alone is fine with me. (I have to be in Anacortes anyway...) The envelope is reminiscent of one I sent her before. I am hoping she'll make a mental connection to who I am as soon as she sees it.

Oh my stars! My friend Janet did something amazing. She sent a donation in to keep one of my blogs (Not this one, but my tiki blog.) online. It was so, so kind oif her to do. When I sent her a note thanking her and asking why she had done it (I was very embarrassed by it all.), she wrote back and said "It was a great opportunity for me to thank you! I totally enjoy your writing,  especially about your tiki adventures.   I share them with friends.  Just wanted to thank you for your fun and amazing stories!" I'm so humbled--and also grateful to have such wonderful friends. (Others have done similar things over the last year or so. It's humiliating, but...)

FOREST OF EVIL: Waaaagh! ANOTHER lame one. I really have NOT gotten my grove back after being away for so long. Darn it! Darn it! DARN IT! This was my "thank you" to Janet and it's just so not good. Grr!!!

I know Valentine's Day was more than a month ago. Here's a festive holdover I am finally getting a response to from P. Landon.

SECERTS OF WINDCLIFF MANOR: While looking through images, I came across the female figure in the negligee on the left. Her image, coupled with responding to a Valentine card and my constant horror themes, got me thinking of the gothic romance novels my friend, Victor Banis, wrote during one of the many phases of his literary career. I couldn't get the gothic romance thing out of my head--so this is what I came up with. Not so fab, but it's something...

Coco Muchmore struck again with a super creative valentine postcard she made.

THE NIGHTMARE MAN: While rummaging through images of things I had previously cut out for future mail art use, I happened on this picture of a creepy old man. It was actually from the cover of a postcard book on the works of Ivan Albright, an artist I had never heard of before until visiting the Chicago Art Institute last fall. I was walking through the halls and turned a corner, running smack dab into a huge painting by him, "The Picture of Dorian Gray." I LOVED it. The painting was made for the 1945 film version of Oscar Wilde's 1891 novel of the same name. The museum did not have individual postcards of this painting, so I purchased the postcard book (which only had one postcard of it, but also several of his other wonderfully bizarre works). I saved the cover because it screamed mail art. While the final envelope isn't that interesting, I was glad to have utilized the image in this response to Coco. 

Adam Roussopoulos graced my mailbox once again...

Inside of the envelope was a nifty zine, "OH! THE HORROR!"

There was also a note and a mail art call. Thank you, Adam.

TOMB OF MYSTERY: Eh...this is what I came up with for him. I had the mummy image. I don't know why I based the envelope around it as the image itself isn't that good. Oh well...

Theo Nelson is a mail artist who lives in Canada. He sent me (via email) this digital postcard (email art?) on the first day of sprint/the spring equinox. There's a poem included as well. Thank you, Theo.

THE BANSHEE: This is what I sent him back. Ehhh... another loser. The banshee woman is a weird piece of AI-created art. I was trying to get AI to create more screaming people for my mail art projects. I must be doing something wrong as most of what it gave me is awful. This "woman" for example is fascinating to me (which is why I used it), but a mess. He teeth are funky, both top set (oddly shaped) and the weird long row on the side of her lower jaw. Her eyes are off as well. No big deal, but another crappy effort over all. Drat!

I had this postcard from my friend Vye in my pile o' mail art to answer. Vye isn't really a mail artist. However, when I got this postcard from her, I thought she was giving mail art a shot with creative sticker placement. No. She informed me it was simply strategic sticker placement for fear the post office would confiscate the post card for having vampire cleavage! Oh my! I decided to send her something anyway...

DEATHMARE: This is what I came up with for her. For being so simple, it came out okay. 

Well, I may not have my groove back yet, but I did get 10 more done. Finally. (And I think I am almost caught up with my "owed" mail art! Whoo hoo!)

THANK YOU for visiting the blog once again.

CHEERS!