During the summer, I spend most of my time working
on collages and assemblage pieces. At best, I had three or four days a week
where I get four or five solid hours of work. This never happens during the
school year. If I’m lucky, I can put together an hour or a two a few times a
week while running up and down the stairs doing chores. Little of that time is
spent doing much writing or working on broadsides, which both require extended
time sitting in front of the computer. As ideas for writing or broadsides come
to me during the summer, I make a list of random ideas. When the summer ends,
and I head back to work, I start to go through my lists. I can easily find an
hour to write during the workday, so my makings output shifts.
In the first week back at work, I had a bit of
downtime and tackled the list one item after another. As I wrote, I started to
think of other snippets of nothingness I wanted to include. The list grew and
grew. The more I work on things, the more I think of other things to make. Not
sure that any of these ideas below warranted their own spotlight so I put them all
together. I like lists. It’s fun to complain and vent to the void.
Here’s the list. A top ten.
The ignore “no” instead of
saying “no”
When to stop using scraps
“Collage writing”
Zine Monies are donations
Postage is too damn high!
That guy
Anyone under 40 doing
mail-art?
Positive affirmations but…someone
else made that
I create homework
Fun facts
The ignore “no” instead
of saying “no”
If people have no interest
in what I make, I’m fine with that. I’m going to make things whether people
like them or not. Since I put many of these creations into public, I’d prefer
some interaction with them, but that’s a lot to ask. Most things come and go. I
move onto the next thing and then the next thing after that. What I hate more
than anything is when people say they’re interested, either engaging in a
project or saying that you’re going to send me money, but when you follow up,
they ignore you. Nancy Reagan and Mr. T. told me to “Just say no” so “Just say
no!” The ignore “no” is worse than the “fuck you, I don’t want it.” At least
theirs some integrity in the “fuck you!”
When to stop using scraps
Everything that I make is
pretty much scraps. Rarely do I make anything that comes from unused materials.
All my materials have been rotting in someone’s basement for the past thirty
years. At best they’ve been sitting on someone’s unused desk for at least a
decade. I like old stuff because it has character and I enjoy searching. I also
don’t like paying for things.
The problem here is that the
scraps I use in projects make their own scraps. If I work on a collage that
I’ve ripped from antiquated books, there’s a jagged edge left over. I cut this
off. If that edge is all “fun” and stuff, I use it in another collage. Whether
I use them or not, the scraps make a nice pile that I toss into the trash
beside my work desk. If I reframe a collage, like cutting a long section off
the end, I can have a nice long piece leftover. It only seems right to save
these pieces.
Over the summer, I collected
all the leftover pieces and then put them in an old Lego container. At the end
of summer, I dumped the pieces on my desk and quickly made collages of the
scraps. Not that these ever come out, they look like shit because there’s just
too many colors and too many textures and too many lines going all over the
place. No matter how much I sand the new creation into a well-blended piece,
it’s too much. To quote Cher, (not that one, but the other one) the collages
become “a full on Monet.”
When I finish my collage of
scraps, I’ve made more scraps. When I held these up, in my hand, I wondered whether
I should shave off the bad ends and put them back in the container. Feeling
that this process would never end (with boring results) I pushed every piece of
scraps into the trashcan. It was liberating and disheartening at the same time.
This forced me to start over and to work with a new pile of materials.
“Collage writing”
I don’t know what this
phrase means, exactly. All I know is that I write a lot of stuff and have done
that for over twenty years. The archive of writing is vast and ridiculous. I
write about music and travel and life and a lot about making things. Often those
things overlap. Sometimes I write about the same subjects again, but I might be
the only one to know that for sure. I don’t care. If I write a short essay, it
might go online, or it might be printed in an edition of 25 and sent to folks
who never read it. If that edition of 25 goes out, maybe only 10 of those folks
read my boring essay about plants, going to Chicago, or whatever nonsense I’m
on about. No one gets it all because there’s no way to keep decent records of
all that and who has the time.
Let me try and define this
thing. “Collage writing,” is where I take from an old thing I wrote, mess with
it, and add it to something new. Punch it up a bit. I’m always plundering the
past to add a short thing. For my upcoming book about Lexington NC, I’ve
collected a lot of loose things in or around town. This is collage writing. I
take and rework and add to something else. There’s enough there, and more to come,
that I can do this forever, like reusing a favorite image in a paper collage. It’s
all a fucking collage.
Zine Monies are donations
No one likes trying to
collect money for projects. I hate doing it. The only times I ask folks for
money is when I’m getting something printed by an actual printer. Other than
that, all my printing needs are done on the sly, very early in the morning. A
couple times a year, for the past few years, I’ve put together some nicer
looking zines. The layout is always simple, just some text or pictures dropped
into a PDF file. At some point, I need to put something together that’s a
little more official looking. Anyway, putting these together is fun and
relatively easy, but they also cost some money. Until recently, I only got them
printed in black and white, but now I’ve started to venture into printing in
color. Color costs more, a lot more. When I get these printed, I ask folks for
money. The money is just to cover the printing and the shipping. One of these
projects (out of about ten) might have made money, but only a few dollars over.
I look to break even, that’s it.
My meticulous records show
who has paid and how much. Super awesome folks donate a little more and that is
noted. Anyone that pays anything at all will automatically get the next one I
print, or at least that’s the goal. In a way, folks are making donations to the
overall project of printing zines and not the single item. It’s a long game. I
thought of all this while trying to justify the costs of my 4x4 zine that no
one wanted. I thought folks would want them…they did not. I printed 25 (the
usual amount) but only six or seven paid. Oops!
Postage is too damn high!
There’s no more of a cliché in
mail-art other than how much postage costs. People complained about the price
of postage when I started almost twenty years ago. Yes, it was less but people
wanted it lesser. I wanted it lesser. I miss that thing where sending to Canada
and Mexico was cheaper than to other countries. Come on, they’re right down
there and right up there. It really was a glorious time all that many years
ago. Although I’m making light of the prices, I’m also annoyed at the prices.
Recently I’ve had to take a week or two off from sending things because I spent
too much the previous week. Sixty dollars, that was my amount. Sixty dollars is
too much for moving paper around the world…too damn much! Don’t even get me
started that stamps go up every single year. In ten years, these will be the
good years and in twenty…the country will be dissolved so it won’t matter all
that much.
That
guy
Just when
you think “that guy” has shuffled off forever, he pops up again. I’ve never
understood his whole deal, other than he thinks direct confrontation is some
sort of critique. This all popped off when one of the Midwest’s finest mail-artists
and humans, was directly harassed for his Anti-Maga zine. That guy wrote in a Facebook
post, “My call is not to hate Adam, nor to pour hatred towards him by your
work: but to truly be ANTI-ADAM.” No real message. No critique. No insight. If
that guy had called for his fellow right-wing followers to engage with an idea
that Adam put forth, then it would have been a misguided, but acceptable
response. What is “ANTI-ADAM?”
From what
I can tell, there’s not a lot of support for that guy’s comments online. He got
a few likes here and there, but no one seemed particularly outraged or even
clear what he was trying to say. When Adam posted about the comments, a lot of
folks shared their thoughts about that guy and his many aliases he cycles
through. None of those comments were positive. One person wrote, “Oh. He's
back! Best approach w him is ignore and block. Mental illness.” Another wrote,
“He was one of the first to send me mail art. The envelope was a 2-sided letter
that rambled on. He Asked me if i wanted to be pen pals. I did not. He also
sent photos of nude women and plants. Yea....I hoped everyone wasn't like that.
I still have all of it as a reminder.”
In the
forty comments to Adam’s post, there wasn’t one dissenting voice of disapproval
for Adam’s project. How about one more post, this one from the venerated snack
master from New Hampshire, “Adam, I
remember that it was Moan’s religious views that put me off many years ago. I
think he’s still living in Liberty, Iowa, which is somewhat ironic in that I’ve
always viewed him as a staunch Libertarian…. think “tea party.” He has had his
share of trauma as a younger man … he and his wife lost their first child…an
infant. I remember that he was a prolific poet and generous with his mail art.
He has always been controversial, but then that’s not an uncommon attribute in
the mail art world. I’m sorry to hear that he’s harassing you. Keep up with the
great things you’re accomplishing.”
I don’t send to that guy. I stopped sending him over a decade ago
because of his erratic behavior. Seeing that others have had issues with him in
the past validates my decision. While some mail-artists have no interest in
judging, I do. Such behavior isn’t necessary. No one has to send mail to
him, or anyone. Not that anyone has his address, since he never posts one other
than a fake one in a former Soviet outpost. Anyway, it’s rare when you get a
clear consensus in the mail-art community. When there’s no one in charge, no
one to regulate participants behavior, there’s rarely judgement. It’s good to
read that many in the community feel the same way about someone disseminating
baseless vitriol.
Anyone
under 40 doing mail-art?
I’m 45. I
intentionally chose an age group younger than me.
Although I
don’t have many direct conversations with mail-artists, the issue of a “new
generation” pops up. Unfortunately, many of the folks that have contributed to
mail-art are getting quite old. In my book of addresses, I often find myself
writing a quick note when someone has died. My current book is only four or
five years old, but this mark is plentiful. While there’s no way to know how
old many mail-artists are actively sending things, I don’t really get the
feeling that a new crop is coming up. Not just folks that send a few things and
disappear, but folks that are generally devoted. Folks that send mail most
weeks without prejudice and are engaged in all processes of documenting. Since
I’ve been in this whole thing (around 2009), I can name only a handful of these
new “stars.”
In some
ways I don’t really care, there’s only so much I can do. I’m sure they’re a
million different reasons that younger folks aren’t that interested. Maybe
mail-art has moments and we’re just in between them. Maybe a new book or movie
starring Timothy Chalemet will come out in the next few years, and then all the
old school mail-artists will complain about the influx of interlopers. From the
art world perspective, the only mail-artist has come and gone, everyone else is
just an avant-garde crafter.
Positive
affirmations but…someone else made that
I like it
when people say nice things about the makings. While you’ll never know if
someone spends more than five seconds looking at a collage or a broadside or
some piece of writing, when some lets me know, I’m appreciative. I’m surprised
even. I hear so little about the things I create that I don’t assume people
really look at them. To me, it’s something I mail that ends up in a giant pile
on someone’s desk, and unless I hear otherwise, that’s my image. I’m mostly
fine with this. I’m not supreme-king-punk; I don’t have complete confidence in
myself. I have maybe…83% confidence in myself, which is a lot if you don’t really
give a shit. I don’t require constant affirmation, but when I get an acknowledgment
that someone spent a little time with my work, it’s helpful. It’s gas in the
tank. It almost justifies the amount I pay on postage every week. Not that you
can easily guess why people like this or that, why they’re drawn to that image,
or that passage in your writing. You make it, you send it, and maybe one thing
out of twenty-five elicits some sort of interaction.
Of course,
people can say nice things, incorrectly. I have one example of this.
Most of
the time I mail out things, I do so in large manila envelopes. In those
envelopes I have broadsides, short writings, ephemera, and a couple of handmade
collages. I always think of the collages as the star of each large envelope.
They’re unique to just one and are the things I work the hardest on. Nice comments
are rarely directed at the collages. Sometimes people say things about the
broadsides and maybe they isolate an image or phrase from the writings.
Overwhelmingly people respond to the last thing in that group, the ephemera.
Normally the ephemera are the things I drop in at the last minute. They’re items
I’ve found elsewhere like pictures and strange pieces of paper. None of these
pieces are things that I’ve had any hand in creating myself. Most of the time,
when someone comments on one of these packages, they say something about the
ephemera…the thing I didn’t create. It’s like they toss all the stuff that took
time and effort and creatively on my part, pull out a funny picture and say,
“Look at this!” I want to response, “Hey asshole, the other stuff! Look at
that.”
I’ve
noticed this happens every time I make stickers. People see stickers and know
what a sicker does, what they’re supposed to do with it. It’s an item that just
makes sense. There’s a context there that people don’t have with a broadside.
What does one do with a broadside after you look at it? Do you put it on the
fridge, do you make a paper airplane out of it, grocery list, no idea. Stickers
stick. Got it.
I create
homework
The great
David Stafford in New Mexico sent me something to this effect. I do create
homework, challenging and enlightening homework. If you retain the information,
you will not only grow intellectually but also emotionally. Sometimes, after
folks have completed my course, they’re eyesight has improved and they’re two
inches taller.
Fun
facts to end this long and meandering list of stellar insights and annoying
grievances.
Almost all
the making packages, no matter the size, are not made for a specific person.
Generally,
I print 25 broadsides on a solid color the first time, and then weird paper for
the second.
For
writing I use WORD and for digital editing I use Paint.
I have scanned thousands of images
from thrift store books for broadsides.
There’s a pile of pre-made
postcards (collages, found pictures) just for non-mail-art people.
All printers are evil.
I’m currently working on a book
about Lexington North Carolian that will be my Sgt. Peppers.
I normally
write about music, mail-art, life, and movies, but I can’t figure out a thing
to say about sports.
Red
spray-paint takes forever to dry.
You know
that thing where you can identify the paper source in someone else’s collage?
Yeah, I love that.
Black
paper leaves horrible dust everywhere after you put sandpaper to it.
Collages
aren’t done unless there’s a face somewhere in it.
I can’t
draw, but I feel like I need to make the effort.
Art people
that wear “art clothes” always make me laugh.
It’s all a
punk rock; a dada punk rock filtered through a mail-art distribution ethos.
I like it
when the rock and roll people respond to me. I’ve gotten things from Ian
MacKaye, Kris Novoselic, and Lisa Loeb.
For months
I’ve meant to offer my image making services to random free jazz musicians, but
I can’t bring myself to do it.
Green
looks bad in a collage.
I often
use images of myself in things because I don’t want to directly make fun of
anyone else, or at least not people that don’t deserve it.
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