Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Mail Art Presentation

At work I’ve been scheduled to present about mail-art to a group of students. Who knows if anyone will show up, but I’m going to say something in front of some for an hour. I’m rather excited about doing this. In order to get students to come listen I’m sure I’ll have to give extra credit or else no one will show up.
Although I don’t have everything lined up, I’ve got a flyer that I’ll hand out to my students about the presentation. I’m also going to make up a bunch of starter packets filled with random bits of material. I did something similar to this for a handful of friends back in the summer, so why not go at it again? I’ve also needed to clean out some of my materials in the backroom for some time. Who knows, maybe someone will actually start sending things if they have some materials to start with.
Part of the purpose of the presentation is the international aspect, actually that’s the whole purpose. Most of my focus will be about the international community that is mail-art. My goal is to have the presentation, pass out some of my original artifacts, and then maybe Skype with some mail artists somewhere else in the world. Who knows what’ll come together but this is my current idea. I have over a month to get things together.

Friday, August 15, 2014

Nostrils - Meatloaf Pants

Another year and another Nostrils record. This year makes three in a row with an EP stuck in there. Last year I went crazy with the bells and whistles, I made shirts and all kinds of shit that put the cost of doing that way too much. The joke isn’t funny enough to justify such expense. Not wanting to spend as much this year I’ve really paired things down. No big packages puffed out with t-shirts and other random nonsense. Meatloaf Pants only comes with the hand packaged CD, and three sticker’s one made by me and the other two by friends.
Although I’m not doing a lot of extra stuff I’m going to try and keep sending these out throughout the year. I’m dropping them off to record stores and I’m going to give extra copies to those that’ll pass them along. The first round is complete, seventy of them, twenty to mail and then the other fifty to hand out later this week. There’s another thirty CD’s that I’ve burnt but haven’t made the packaging for. Two of them are going out of the country so there’s nine dollars between two packages. Who knows, maybe someone will laugh.
Because I’m sending twenty of these out tomorrow, I’m going to have to put off any other mail-art until the start of next month. This wouldn’t be too bad but I’ve got over twenty cards waiting to go and just in my eyesight while sitting in my comfy chair.

Tuesday, August 5, 2014

Made With Student Stuff

At the end of last semester I collected all of the “fun bits” laying around my office. Some of the items were extra credit assignments, others were handwritten things I found in the trash, and the others were my class’s finals. Since I have to grade a lot of essays at the end of the semester, I don’t have them do anything difficult days before I have to have my grades in. So, they’re forced to come to the final time and do a little drawing and coloring. I took this giant stack of paper and made dozens (maybe a dozen and a half) and made them into mail-art postcards. I sent them off and then went to Portland for a little while. The only image of one of these landing was this one card, which made me a little sad since I really enjoyed making these and I thought they came out really well. Either way, here’s the one that surfaced.