I’ve always tallied up
the amount of mail that comes in and goes out. No idea why I do this?
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The 2024 Tally
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Here is the pattern. I
get mail out of the post office box, open it up, put it in a wicker basket
under my TV, and then take it upstairs to count when the basket fills up. I
note each piece from every mail artist. At the end of the year I put together a
tally of what I’ve received. I also do this for what I send out. Normally I
send out a giant pile of stuff at one time and not to any particular person.
Some of the work could have been sitting for two weeks or two months, I make a
lot so it tends to pile. I go to my address book and then go through the tally,
focusing on the ones that show a mild imbalance of mail. I mail to them first.
If I have something special to send out I’ll mail that to specific folks whenever
I’m done with that piece. After putting the addresses on, I add the amount I
sent to the overall total and at the end of the year I add it all up.
So…by this logic, I
received 442 things and mailed 414. However, this isn’t correct.
The numbers aren’t right.
While the received amount is probably on point, or at least close to it, the
amount I’ve sent in 2024 is way off. Most weeks I send a random piece to this
specific person, a reply, a letter, something bigger that doesn’t always get
counted. If there’s not an original collage in the bunch I don’t always count
that either. I feel like I’m cheating people if there’s not something original
in an envelope. But none of that is the biggest discrepancy, friends and family
are. I don’t count the mail art (collages, cards either original or “professionally
printed”) that I send to friends and family. I don’t count those because I
never get anything back from them. In a calendar year I get maybe four
postcards from folks I personally know, and then maybe ten Christmas cards at the
end of the year. Not worth keeping a tally. No problem, I don’t expect anything
in return, it’s just what I do.
However, the amount I
send to friends and family can be a lot. For some folks I sent ten to fifteen
cards / mailings / pieces of garbage a year. That amount could be sent to as
many as thirty or forty people. That’s a lot of mail! Anyway, basically I’m
saying that I send out a lot of stuff in a year and it’s almost impossible to
keep it all straight. No one needs this information, I just like collecting it.
By the way, I keep two address books, one for mail-artists and one for friends
and family.
In thinking back on this
past year of mail-art (my focus for this post…I guess) I’m struck by the
amount. I send too much. I really should pull back a bit. I know it’s not a
typical new year’s resolution to do less, but I feel like I should. Not make
less, just send less. So much of what I receive is underwhelming that I
shouldn’t feel guilty if I’m not responding quickly and in kind. I’ll get to
you at some point, but I’m tired of trying to keep up because of my own
ridiculously imposed rules.
Some of the ways I’m
going to limit my post is to step up my little library drop offs. Whenever the
local thrift stores have sales on frames, I can get them for cheaper than what
a stamp costs. I can put the collage in a frame, drop it off to a little
library, and walk away. It’s almost the exact feeling as putting a stamp on
something and then dropping it in the mail, but I tend to get weird responses
from the libraries, almost exclusively bad. Provoking a rare little library
response is a lot more rewording than the overall ambivalence that comes from
mailing something. People get so mad at something they could break or toss in
the trash. I’m giving you a frame, think about it that way.
And more…more rambling
goals.
I need to thin out my
materials. Being a thrift store junkie is great for finding random pieces, but
often you use two or three things but initially buy fifty. You end up with
forty-eight things you can’t use. So, for the coming year I’m going to
consistently make collage packets for kids and leave them wherever I can.
Asking if adults want a bunch of weird paper online never works, no one ever
wants them.
I will continue to not listen to people with suggestions
about how to monetize my work.
I will continue to not pursue putting my creations on
the wall of a “gallery” or public space.
I will continue to assume no one cares about any of
this, and make what I want.
I want to do a series of
record covers. Not record covers for bands, although I’m more than open to that
idea, but recreations of record covers. This might be cuter than anything. I
might use Miles as my model. You know, have his head peeking out on a recreation
of Fugazi’s Steady Diet of Nothing? Been thinking about doing this for some
time but have never made a proper attempt. Low fi and shitty for sure, mainly
for the music heads. I don’t normally do cute but why not?
Before my dad died, I had
the idea to collect a bunch of my weirdo writing into a big book. I wanted the
book to be something of stature. I wanted it to take up some space. No one
cares about a digital file they’ll never open. The initial idea was to collect
a bunch of my writing over the past 20 years, mostly shorter pieces. No real organization
to the thing just a book of weirdo observations, travel writing, and lists.
When my dad died this went out the window and I focused on the book (is it a
zine, not sure) about him. That took a lot of time to put together, as well as
money. I got a few dollars back from that project, but very little compared to
how much it cost to print and then mail. Although this wasn’t great, I was initially
bothered by losing a few hundred dollars on a project. It wasn’t the end of the
world to lose the money because I had it. My cheap ass was worried. No one else
is going to publish it or ask me to do it, so I might as well. Next week I’m
going to start in on it.
In a similar fashion, (it’s
always money) I need to be more active in sending out assemblages to mail-art
friends. I need to send them to folks that might appreciate them even if it
costs me a whole eight dollars. I need to break the pattern of thinking that
volume is the best method. At least
doing this will break the monotony of continuous manila envelopes I usually
send. Not sure which mail-artists would be interested in a sign that has the
word “wiener” on it.
And then there’s the one
resolution that is going to be the most challenging. In the coming year, I need
to change up the way I make paper collages. The process came about by accident,
like most of the things I end up making. I had all of this sticker paper,
mostly rejects from businesses laying around. It only made sense to place bits
of cut paper to the sticky paper. When I started doing this, I completely moved
away from the tape transfer method, something I played around with for years.
When I started making
paper collages I found a lane pretty quickly. I was able to come up with
something I found acceptable early on. When I found that I could do something
with it, I forced myself to keep going. I forced myself to do the same thing
over and over again for as long as I could. I knew that working with things in
this way would produce different results over time. Now, a few years into
playing around with things in this way, I’ve hit a wall. Although I get
something I find truly great every now and again, (maybe ten percent of what I
make) I’m mostly making the same thing over and over again. I have the main
image, mostly of a person, and then squares and rectangles around it.
Sometimes, often, I have a word to give context to the main person in question.
This needs to change.
In 2025 I plan on
breaking out some collage books to get more ideas. I need to work in some
paint, maybe some stencils, maybe some tape transfers, but something new. Maybe
I’ll try and copy a lot of other collages that I enjoy. Work with cardboard?
Not sure I want to get out an exacto-knife and start cutting, that technique is
just too pretty for me. I admire people that go in that direction I just don’t
have the patience.
If anything, I want to
get rid of the line, the dreaded line. I have no idea how to do this or even if
other people see the line, but I hate the line. I hate when I put a lot of
pieces together and end up with a clear line of where they were taped to each
other. It’s like an addition to a building where you can tell the new part from
the old. When I see this I immediately hate whatever I’ve created simply
because I can see where it came together. Instead of the piece looking like a
collection of small bits to me, it looks like a sloppy house addition. I’ve
tried cutting things on angle but that just makes it look an ariel-view of a
well-planned city.
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Lines, lines, everywhere lines.
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I will find a way to get
rid of the line.