Saturday, January 31, 2015

Scrap Exchange Birthday Run

The Scrap Exchange Facebook constantly reminds me how I’m not the best customer with their constant updates. I look at these updates and say out loud, “I need to go.” Unfortunately when your favorite store is more than eighty miles away, it’s not the easiest trip to make. Instead of sticking around the office on my birthday, I decided to make the trip, just for that one store. The new location is a lot more spacious but I’m not sure if I’m completely sold on it. I feel like I found more stuff at the old location, mainly the “sticky items.” Mostly I look for stickers and clear industrial tape that was discarded for some reason. The circles of clear tape just isn’t there anymore and that makes me kind of sad. I can’t imagine finding the stuff anywhere else and that’s why I love going to that story…you’re not going to find this shit anywhere else.
I wondered around for an hour or so, looking through the tapes and the bits of paper, rubber stamps and general bullshit. I don’t care for the fabric or the glass leftovers so I can skip those sections. It’s all about the paper for me. It’s all about the blue bins for me. As usual, I put all of my things on the counter without knowing how much it was going to be. Sometimes it feels like you’re ripping them off and other times you get charged for every little thing. This time I was charged for everything! I mostly bought stickers that were leftover from Whole Foods. Out of context these things are going to be amazing.
The total was fifty-five dollars.

Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Tucker Fan Club Update

Earlier in the month I posted some art with my friend Tucker’s visage in it. In those three weeks, things have really gone nuts related to that project. The book of student generated Tucker images was the first step in my whole “Tucker Fan Club” idea. First off, I have to answer a quick question that people always ask me, “Why him?” My response is always the same, “He’s nice, and he really likes it.” The second part of the “program” was to simply send out stickers to friends and mail-art associates. I hoped that they would send me an image of where the sticker was affixed in their hometown. The last part (that I’m willing to divulge publically) I printed off a lot of paper Tucker heads, and I’ve moved them around the world, asking mail-artists to create collages out of them.
Slowly but surely, about two week ago, I started to get back some collages. On a whim one day, bored at my desk at work, I decided to set up a Facebook “Tucker Fan Club” page. There was little to no thought about where this was going to go, no direction whatsoever. I set it up and then started to add folks. By the end of the first day I had almost 200 “likes.” To respond to this interest I started to scan everything that I had with his face on it. Knowing that I had to keep people interested, I made crude images to put online in between the much better mail-art I was receiving.
Since that first day, I’ve done some interesting things around the site.
1. I have created two contests for altered Tucker images. I’ve given the participants handmade (by me) magnets. I couldn’t get five takers for the second round.
2. I’ve given an interview mostly about the fan page to a weekly paper in Greensboro.
3. I’ve sent out dozens of stickers to strangers all around the country who have some connection to Tucker.
4. Strangely enough, Tucker’s mom is the biggest fan of the whole project. She’s a very supportive lady.
5. 262 people have liked the project.
Above is a rubberstamp I had made of the man’s face.

Saturday, January 17, 2015

An Allan Bealy Project

The wonderful mail-artist / artist / super guy Allan Bealy sent me a message a couple months ago about. He directly asked me to take part in a project he was putting together for the New Year. The idea was to give 26 mail-artists one letter of the alphabet. The artists creates a work about the letter and then Allan makes a proper book out of it. When he asked me to join the project I was thrilled, flattered, and amazed that he would even think of me. This guy is fucking good, like great, like amazing.
I took too long to create something. I thought about it off and on for at least two weeks before I decided to put it together. I ended up making two different collages, both were very simple. I wasn’t happy with either of them, but I thought they displayed what I normally create. Instead of picking one, I sent both of them to let him decide. He chose the one I knew he would chose, which was a bunch of tape-ripped circles. I used circular tape so the composition had a little more movement than if I used rectangular slices of tape. It was simple but I liked it, fine. He seemed to like. I can’t wait to see what everyone else did.
And the image...

Friday, January 9, 2015

Don in Chile is Wonderful

Every once in a while I forget how fun sending postcards around the world can possibly be. Sometimes you forget that people (often gracious) are on the other end of your creation since so often you never hear, see, or connect with that other person. Twenty five percent of the time you never even get anything back let alone a personal, “thank you.” Ron in Chile posted this image of himself with one of my creations on my Facebook page. Seeing him with the card so far away made my day. It’s nice to put a face with a name.

Tuesday, January 6, 2015

"Draw Tucker a New Body" Book

This project (an ongoing one) has gotten much larger in scope than I initially wanted it to. It started with six songs about the wonderful club owner / lover, Tucker. The only reason I did the EP was because he seemed to be the only person that cared about the “music.” As a “thank you” I decided to write “songs” about his height and love of soccer.
A couple months ago I decided to make some collages out of his visage. I mailed all of these to him as I created them, maybe ten or twelve in all. To step up my game, I called on my students to help me in moving around this cutie’s head. Since I spend finals week reading research papers, my official and forced finals consist of my students “drawing something”…mostly filling in an image I find online. This time I took one of his pictures and made it into a fill in the blank game.
Here you have my favorite images of Tucker pasted into a book. About 80 students completed this final. Many asked if we were going to be friends after I showed him the images. My response was, “I’m sure.”
Doing this one thing has gotten me thinking that I can do much more. This is only the first in a series of many ongoing projects that will take months to unfold.

Sunday, January 4, 2015

Bingo Markers

Most of my “tools” for making mail art are super basic, and super cheap. I live that children’s discount art supply isle at Target a whole lot. Since I make lowbrow and sloppy things, I should use the most basic items to create those trashy creations. One of my favorite things to use are bingo markers that I think I bought at Dollar Tree. They’re hard to control, which is something I like. The ink never seems to turn out and they’re a lot of fun to use. In a pinch you can use them as a sloppy magic marker. They make a good splat too if you slam on the table.

Thursday, January 1, 2015

Sent 324 - Got 260

2014 is my most productive year in making mail art according to my meticulous record keeping. The goal was to send out 365 things, which probably was the case. I don’t count Nostrils CD’s, or zines and what not, so I probably was close to if not well over that amount. Hopefully I can make even more in the New Year. I received 260 things.