Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Sent to...

Above sent to Cernjul Viviana in Argentina
Above sent to Dustin Hamby in Texas
Above sent to Frieder Speck in Germany
Above sent to Stephanie Blake in Alabama

Monday, January 28, 2013

Zine Review Number 2

I have made and sent out two zines. One zine was about my trip to China and the other about Misty and I’s trip out west. They’re nothing great, just an account of what happened, some thoughts, some feelings. They’re quite predictable travelogues, but that’s the idea. I wrote them because I could. I ended up sending forty or fifty zines to people all over the globe, not to mention sending them to friends and family. I doubt most people read the thing, but I heard some nice things from a few people, most of them half-way across the world. Of close friends and family I think three people made their whole way through the whole thing. It’s just part of it, you make the thing to make the thing, not expecting anyone to care about what you made or even pay attention to it…read it, or look at it past a couple minutes. I sent both zines to a zine maker in New York and he had the following to say in his own zine. I think it’s a good review? I guess he read it, so that’s something. Anyway, it’s nice that someone took the time to comment on something I spent a lot of time working with. I thank him for it.

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Sent To...

Above sent to Catherine Petre (Belgium)
Above sent to Janine Weiss (Switzerland)

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

The New Incoming

Above from Tallie Jones (Washington USA)
Above from Michael Orr (Georgia USA)
Above from Richard Canard (Illinois USA)
Above from Carmela Rizzuto (California USA)
Above from Carina Granlund (Finland)
Above from Mariana Serban

Thursday, January 17, 2013

Sent to Dean Marks (France)

I sent this to Dean Marks in France. While I was looking at the scan he made and posted through the IUOMA site, I was struck by a few things. First off, I really like colored tape. I spend so much time looking for strange tape, strong tape, and odd sized tape, that it’s kind of an obsession. It’s all the tape a wise man once said. Secondly, I like my source material to deal with the body. I consistently buy textbooks about anatomy, especially old textbooks where all of the images are drawn. Real pictures just don’t fit my palate; I like old images, images on cheap paper that rip very easily. Old paper always produces the best dissolves between images and gives the effect I really enjoy. So yeah, this is a card that I think best exemplifies what I like to make.

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Lots of New Mail Art

From Sarah Churchill (UK) From Richard Canard (USA) From Kim Jungyoun (South Korea) From Claudia McGill (USA) Vizma Bruns (Australia) Moan Lisa (USA)

Friday, January 11, 2013

Found at CVS Pharmacy

Ever since I started making my tape things, I’ve been a fine connoisseur of tape. I know brand names of tape, the ones that work the best for my projects. Target seems to have the strongest tape in the business for some strange reason. Target tape just sticks better. A few weeks back I found a wealth of colored and see through tape that I love working with. Thankfully I stocked up on the colored tape since it all seems to be gone from that particular junk store. Tape is now my friend. Just yesterday I found these little darlings while picking up some pictures at my local pharmacy. I haven’t used them yet but I can imagine how much fun the dispensing of sticky plastic is going to be with these monsters. I bought all they had.

Thursday, January 10, 2013

The Rise of the New Address Book

When I started making mail art, I decided to keep somewhat detailed notes about what arrived in my mailbox and what I sent out. I did this from day one. In my notebook I would write down the artist’s name, and beside their name I would keep a tally of the amount they sent to me, and how much I sent to them. This way, I kept a one to one balance. There’s one person out there that I cannot possibly catch up with, damn Buckeyes! Overall, I was even with each sender or maybe a couple up. When I got three or four pieces up on someone I usually stopped sending, expecting that they’d gotten out of the game, or weren’t interested in sending to me anymore. I would much rather spread the work around to those that seemingly want it than to people who see my items as a complete nuisance.
The longer I sent things out, the more types of information I started to collect. I had a section of the names of people I sent zines to, a section for Nostrils recipients, a section for bigger items I sent out, and a tally of all the shows I sent my work to. Obviously the book filled up. There are no more pages in the old one to add stuff to. I needed a new one. This time I decided to organize things a little more. To make things tidier, I put little tabs on the side of the notebook to find everyone’s name much quicker. Alphabetical order cuts down so much searching time for names-some folks I’d sent so much to that I could remember the random place in the book without any trouble. For example, I could get to Mr. Herman’s name in France very quickly. I even filtered out a lot of people that had stopped sending or never sent me anything in reply, cutting down my book by about two hundred addresses. If they come back to the fold I’m sure I’ll end up sending them something again, but until that time, they’re on a the sidelines for a bit. So here’s the new book, it’s already started filling up. I started adding all of the stickers on the things months ago when I decided I needed a new. The old one turned into art itself, so I wanted to duplicate that whole process. One bit of OCD bookkeeping, I kept the old books tally of how much I sent and how much each recipient sent in return.

Friday, January 4, 2013

The "Horse Stamp" - Scanned in Greece by Mom Kat

I’m not sure when I started to get into stamps? I mean, it’s not that big of a deal and I’m kind of saddened by that last sentence, sounds so silly. There’s something about an ink pad and a carved rubber image that’s fun. It feels like magic when you press the thing down to the ink and there you go, you’ve got something that looks like something. All of the stamps I’ve purchased were at thrift stores, or discount stores, or something of the like, never anything I’ve made. I know quite a few people on IUOMA that make their own, which also feels like a type of magic. I just buy mine, and I just bought this one of my face and an almost undecipherable horse off to the left. It’s the infamous picture of me in Hawaii, sitting in Nick’s truck, looking at the foliage and the “wild” horses. As one of the equine bastards poked his head into the cab, I decided to take a picture. At the exact moment the camera went off, the neck-beast chomped down on my right arm. Fortunately the picture came out really well, and is one of my favorite pictures ever taken of me, a self-portrait if you will. Not too much romance in the stamp, I just uploaded the picture online and it shipped to my house. I did a smaller circular one as well, but I don’t think people notice that it’s me. This image was scanned by a mail-art friend in Greece, Mom Kat.