In the Snow and Ice (qbdp # 108)

qbdp # 108, "One flake OVER" (9 Dec 2005)
Holiday Inn, JFK, Room 829, Queens, New York

Too tired last night to created this small set of cards, I created it this morning, using as inspiration the snowy and icy weather outside my hotel window and the long snake of traffic the weather created. I wrote the "message" of this mailart onto the postcard that formed one part of the four-part orihon and catalog for Jim Hodges' "Don't Be Afraid," a banner covered with numerous translations of that phrase and shown at the Hirshhorn in Washington, DC. I picked up copies of this when we were in the DC area for Thanksgiving last month.

The lucky recipients of this mailing were as follows:

1. Ruth and Marvin Sackner

2. Bob Grumman

3. Roy Arenella

4. Dan Waber

5. qbdp

un violon d'ingres

And, for Example: "&I.e.G." (qbdp # 107)

Geof Huth, "&I.e.G." (26 Nov 2005)

Abbey Oak Drive, Vienna, Virginia

Today is my in-laws' fiftieth wedding anniversary, quite an accomplishment but today's mailing has nothing to do with that. Instead, I created this second of two mailings to remember a multi-voice reading of poems I participated in three weeks ago to the day..

This issue of qbdp consists of a folder (with the image above as its cover), and a visual poem I wrote while on a train going home after the reading. However, I didn't created all the handwritten copies of that poem on the train that night (as I did for the poem in the first mailing). Instead, I wrew them out over the past couple of days.

The recipients of "&I.e.G." (which includes a handwritten copy of the poem) are as follows:

1. Ruth and Marvin Sackner

2. Bob Grumman

3. Roy Arenella

4. Ruud Janssen

5. Dan Waber

6. Jennifer Hill-Kaucher

7. Adeena Karasick

8. Steve Dalachinsky

9. Lillian Fellman

10. Bernard Elsmere

11. Alan Semerdjian

12. Holly Crawford

13. Susan Scutti

14. Barbara DeCesare

15. Mick Boyle

16. RF Côté

17. endwar

18. frips

19. Jassy Lupa

20. Ryosuke Cohen

21. Jim Leftwich

22. Ron Silliman

23. Karri Kokko

24. Ross Priddle

25. Gustave Morin

26. qbdp

un violon d'ingres

On Paper Like Felt: "Felt (ifIfElTiT+ieNcIRcled1)" (qbdp # 106)

Abbey Oak Drive, Vienna, Virginia

Geof Huth, "Felt

(ifIfElTiT+ieNcIRcled1)"

(qbdp # 106, 25 Nov 2005)

After a day of touring Washington, DC, with my family, I came back to my sister-in-law's house and put together a very simple mailing. I took 10 slightly askew proof copies of a recent broadside of mine put out by Johnny Brewton of X-Ray Book Co. and turned them into postcards.

Those who received copies of "Felt (ifIfElTiT+ieNcIRcled1)" (qbdp # 106) are as follows:

1. Ruth and Marvin Sackner

2. Bob Grumman

3. Roy Arenella

4. Dan Waber

5. Reed Altemus

6. Jassy Lupa

7. frips

8. RF Côté

9. Ross Priddle

10. qbdp

ecr. l'inf.

Sounds off the Pages: "WORD page snds AURA" (qbdp # 105)

Geof Huth, "WORD page snds AURA" (24 Nov 2005)

Abbey Oak Drive, Vienna, Virginia

Today is Thanksgiving in the United States, and my family and I are at my wife's sister's house with all of her family. While we prepared dinner and watched movies on TV, I finalized this first of two mailings to remember a multi-voice reading of poems I participated in this month.

This issue of qbdp consists of a folder (with the image above as its cover), and a visual poem ("WORD PAGE SNDS AURA") I wrote while on a train going home after the reading. Each mailed copy of the poem was handwritten on that train. The poem above resembles the handwritten poem vaguely, but it is a much different interpretation of the words. I explained the mailing with this text below, which appears on the back cover of the folder.

This mailing memorializes a reading of multi-voice poems performed on November 5th, 2005, at the Bowery Poetry Club, New York, New York, by Dan Waber, Jennifer Hill-Kaucher, Andrea Jade Talarico, Holly Crawford, Adeena Karasick, Steve Dalachinsky, Geof Huth, Alan Semerdjian, Jennifer Ley, Barbara DeCesare, Susan Scutti, Lillian Fellmann, and Bernard Elsmere. Geof Huth created this visual poem (and wrote out the copies of it that appear inside this folder) while traveling home by train that night.

The recipients of "WORDS page snds AURA" (which includes a handwritten copy of "WORD PAGE SNDS AURA") are as follows:

1. Ruth and Marvin Sackner

2. Bob Grumman

3. Roy Arenella

4. Ruud Janssen

5. Dan Waber

6. Jennifer Hill-Kaucher

7. Adeena Karasick

8. Steve Dalachinsky

9. Lillian Fellman

10. Bernard Elsmere

11. Alan Semerdjian

12. Holly Crawford

13. Susan Scutti

14. Barbara DeCesare

15. Mick Boyle

16. RF Côté

17. endwar

18. frips

19. Ficus strangulensis

20. fat red ant

21. Luc Fierens

22. Jukka-Pekka Kervinen

23. Jim Leftwich

24. Jimi Camero

25. Ryosuke Cohen

26. qbdp

un violon d'ingres

The Mail from the Classroom

In October, my wife Nancy Huth taught her annual mailart section of her annual creative writing class, during which she has her students create mailart and mail them to our home. This year there was much good work from these students. If mailartists were "professional" artists, I'd call this professional quality mailart. Wonderful imagination was rampant through these pieces, so I could only show a small sample here (above as a small "collage" and below in the previous seven entries).

un violon d'ingres

A Pair of Single

Kelley Imbody, "We all sing the songs of separation" (7 Oct 2005) and Theresa Henry, "And we watch our lives bleed out through our hands" (7 Oct 2005)
(Click on Image for Larger View)

Sometimes the famous Dutch mailartist Ruud Janssen places two envelopes side by side and paints a single painting across the face of both. Kelley Imbody and Theresa Henry appear to have been influenced by Janssen, since they each have designed separate cards that fit together into one. The backside of the card is white and covered with glitter and lyrics from songs of Thursday, a band they like and also one of the themes the class chose for this mailart project. The other sides of the cards match each other quite well but do not form a single image as this side does, making these cards completely of a piece and completely separate (depending on one's literal point of view).

un violon d'ingres

Your Dry Purple Heart, Rough Like Sandpaper Rubbed Free of Grains

Ashley Oliver, "That Thursday" (Oct 2005)

Maybe Ashley Oliver was born a mailartist. I have no other way to explain the flurry of structural imagination she exhibits in this small card--so many ideas that are practically new to the field. The surface of her card consists of two pieces of canvas glued to either side of a stiff piece of cardboard. But this is not enough. She then sculpts the edge of the card into gentle rolling curves. Finally, she glues a purple hear to the upper edge of the card, allowing it to protrude over the top.

It's a beautiful structure made more beautiful by the maculate painting on the card, dark and blotchy, upon which she writes in curving lines of silver and gold a few words about Thursday.

un violon d'ingres

Palimpsest Future

Vanessa Rivera, "Do I qualify?" (7 Oct 2005)

The collage that forms the focal point of this mailart card is created out of smsall bits of found text and image snipped out of magazines, scattered across a rough-hewn piece of corrugated cardboard (flaring at its edges), and taped in place with what appears to be packing tape. Much of this is reminiscent of the collage work of Jukka-Pekka Kervinen, and, in this manner, Vanessa Rivera tells a story of worry: worry about getting into college, worry about paying for college, worry about the future that Fate intends for her.

This card becomes a whole with the addition of its other side. You cannot see it here, so you will have to imagine it. Vanessa has ripped a scrap out of a pulpy sheet of composition of that type used in primary grades to teach children how to write for the first time. This lined paper has three different types of lines, so as to help small children form their letters: a solid blue line at the top, a dotted green line below it, a solid red line below that, then a solid blue line at the bottom which becomes the top line of the next section. Bits of a youngster's writing practice are still visible on this sheet of paper, but they have been erased almost to nothingness. Vanessa appears to be recollecting her childhood, the point at which she first became a student, a bit before the plaint she has written on this scrap ("Do I qualify?") has ever occurred to her.

un violon d'ingres

Indecisive, so a Plethora

Meghan Marx, "Puzzled from indecisive feelings" (12 Oct 2005)

This card by Meghan Marx is much more complicated in construction than it appears to be at first. The card has separated during transit allowing me the opportunity to open it up and examine its innards. The skeleton of the card consists of a stiff piece of non-corrugated cardboard (and a panda--beside a patch of bamboo and all before a green field--decorate this shiny piece of cardboard). On the back of this card, Meghan has glued a piece of brown paper, but (most fun of all) she has taped a piece of purple plastic bag to the face of the card, cut lines through the bag, and threaded three strips of yellow paper (each with a line of my wife's address) through these slots.

Separately, she has glued together colorful rectangles of paper into a larger rectangle and covered these with strips of paper that spell out a story, a poem, a conversation about Thursday, which is the theme of her mailart card. This entire piece of the card she originally glued to the shiny face of the stiff card, but the glue has dried and released this colorful flap of paper, which now swings on a hinge of cellophane tape away from its other half.

un violon d'ingres

My Bloodless Valentine

Kevin Duquette, "Drain the blood from this Valentine..." (11 Oct 2005)

When this card arrived in our mailbox it smelled like a dead fire. Kevin Duquette had cut a simple postcard out of a thin but dense piece of cardboard, written a small message and a couple of addresses, and then he drew and wrote a message on the white side of the card. He also burned the card, breaking away one of its edges into a series of scallops, and burning the face of the card (or staining it) but delicately enough so that we could still see the message. With the card so artistically smudged, the single bit of color in the petals of the pink rose rises out of a cloudy sea of brownness.

un violon d'ingres

Not Paying Your Postage Dues

Zeke Mishanec, "...thought the" (10 Oct 2005)

This card, produced for my wife's mailart lesson in her creative writing class, never made it into our mailbox. Instead, Nancy received a postage due notice for $3.62. Since every piece of mailart sent by the class was a postcard and Nancy had given each student a postcard stamp, she assumed this card was actually a package of some kind and she never picked it up. Eventually, the post office returned the card to Zeke Mishanec, and he took it to class. Then everything became clear: on the front of the card, he had taken a "priority mail" sticker and cut it into jagged shards that he placed on the card--and the post office saw the sticker and assigned this the standard priority mail rate, rather than the postcard rate.

The postage due sticker obscured part of the face of the card, including a little note that now consists of nothing more than "thought the / were stupid." The obverse of the card remains a beautifully simple design. On the back of the card, which is a single sheet of stiff red plastic cut out of a larger piece of the same, he has painted a ragged set of colors. He has obviously laid the plastic down upon bits of wet paint, but there is something else going on here. A few partial portraits of letters appear--almost totally disguised and usually as negative spaces--upon the card: the rising incline of an M, an e almost transformed into a theta, and other bits, scattered about like a discouraged thought giving up its goal.

un violon d'ingres

The Center of the Plane

Breenah Rowden, "Life is hard" (11 Oct 2005)

This entry is the first of seven I am posting on the mailart from my wife Nancy's creative writing class. There was so much good stuff that I could only pick a few to present here.

The back face of Breenah Rowden's card is akin to a handdrawn collage. She has divided the surface into a grid of nine rectangles, with the three larger rectangles occupying the middle column. The four rectangles at the corners include various images from life: the torso of a pregnant woman, a tae kwon do certificate, the face of a girl, and a phrase. The other four rectangles along the edge of the card are flags of various nations. And the center rectangle is the moral of this piece, a simple call to take life on its own terms and not give up. What I like most about this card, though, is how the soft colors and textures of the colored pencils give the piece a hazy cast, as if the whole card were shot in soft focus.

un violon d'ingres

A Limited Syllabary: "The map of my alphabet" (qbdp # 104)

Hampton Inn--Manhattan, Room 201, New York, NY

Just before I headed out for meetings this morning--why always the morning? because I have so much email and writing to do at night--I made these five cards, which were originally six until I messed one up royally. They carry on their faces a simple fidgetglyph created during a meeting last week.


Geof Huth, "The map of my alphabet" (qbdp 104, 15 Nov 2005)
The following people received a copy of this card:

1. Ruth and Marvin Sackner

2. Bob Grumman

3. Roy Arenella

4. Dan Waber

5. qbdp

un violon d'ingres

The Art of Translation (A Call for Submissions)

For its 25th anniversary, the Center for Translation Studies at the University of Texas at Dallas opens a call for mail art on the theme of "The Art of Translation." All media are welcome, including collage, concrete poetry, and art with moving parts. Snail mail only. No works will be returned. Documentation to all who provide address. Selected works to become part of an exhibition on the same theme. Send work to

Center for Translation Studies
The University of Texas at Dallas
P. O. Box 830688
MS JO 51
Richardson TX, 75083

Deadline: 31 December 2005

un violon d'ingres

Mississippi Page-Turner: "page" (qbdp # 103)

The Poughkeepsie Grand Hotel, Room 507, Poughkeepsie, New York

Strangely, I found myself in Poughkeepsie only as a way station on a trip to New York City. On the morning I left Poughkeepsie, I somehow found the time to put together this set of thirteen cards. I created this little five-line fidgetglyph (more poemlike than most fidgets) during some meeting sometime recently, so it was easy enough to transfer it onto a set of cards I picked up for free at a Mississippi travel center this summer.


Geof Huth, "page" (qbdp 103, 2 Nov 2005)
un violon d'ingres
The baker's dozen who received this card were

1. Ruth and Marvin Sackner

2. Bob Grumman

3. Roy Arenella

4. Ruud Janssen

5. ViZine!

6. fat red ant

7. Jim Leftwich

8. Ross Priddle

9. Gianni Simone

10. Tim Gaze

11. Dan Waber

12. Karri Kokko

13. qbdp

un violon d'ingres

The Walnut Sky: "The Wind's Flame" (qbdp # 102)

Hampton Inn, Room 215, Williamsville, New York

I'm in Williamsville, New York, to help present a one-and-a-half-day symposium on electronic records. Tonight is probably my easiest night of the week for me, so I sat down, took out my pens and my walnut ink and splashed ink on the page until I liked something enough to copy it onto nice big watercolor cards.


Geof Huth, "The Wind's Flames" (qbdp 102, 27 Oct 2005)
The recipients of this mailing were

1. Ruth and Marvin Sackner

2. Bob Grumman

3. Roy Arenella

4. Ruud Janssen

5. Dan Waber

6. Dees Stribling

7. qbdp

un violon d'ingres

Where's qbdp # 101?

I can't reveal the answer to that question yet, but you'll know soon enough.

un violon d'ingres

A Confusion of Signs: "EARMARK" (qbdp # 100)

Sheraton Dover Hotel, Room 612, Dover, Delaware


Geof Huth, "EARMARK" (qbdp 100, 22 Oct 2005)
On the second late night of a conference, I somehow found the time to create a small visual pwoermd and fidgetglyph during a session, which I transferred onto a dozen cards. The dozen lucky recipients of this card were as follows:

1. Ruth and Marvin Sackner

2. Bob Grumman

3. Roy Arenella

4. Ruud Janssen

5. Dan Waber

6. Jimi Camero

7. Pablo Wright

8. Jim Leftwich

9. Ryosuke Cohen

10. Scott McDonald

11. Ficus strangulensis

12. qbdp

un violon d'ingres

Yet Another View: "res een" (qbdp # 99)

Sheraton Dover Hotel, Room 612, Dover, Delaware


Geof Huth, "res een" (qbdp 99, 21 Oct 2005)
Trying to enjoy myself at a conference, I took a recent fidgetglyph and wrew a copy of it onto ten cards. The recipients of this card were

1. Ruth and Marvin Sackner

2. Bob Grumman

3. Roy Arenella

4. Ruud Janssen

5. Dan Waber

6. RF Côté

7. Karri Kokko

8. Jassy Lupa

9. Ross Priddle

10. qbdp

un violon d'ingres

A Fortune Box of Cookie Fortunes

This mailing from Dan Waber is one I should have written about much sooner. I received it, I believe, in early August, but its shape kept it out of the pile of mailart I had to write about.

In a small carved wooden box (made in Vietnam), Dan included two cinnamon fortune cookies he had made--they were delicious, and I ate them right away--into which he had inserted the two fortunes you see in the photo below. The more complicated one uses tmesis to break apart the term "fortune cookie" to find the other possible meanings hidden within it. The simpler fortune, however, is a bit enigmatic. My guess is that it is a reference to the great Canadian poet bpNichol, whose visual poems were often focused on the linear stability of the capital H.


Dan Waber, "for tune, cook i, e" and "H" (Aug 2005)
un violon d'ingres

Like Matches to Lotus Blossoms

This simple collage--consisting of the face of a matchbox glued onto a card that Angela then colors to match the matchbox cover--still draws me in. What Angela Genusa has done is find a simple yet alluring image and then give is an almost spartan world to live in, but one that draws out the alluring features of the original.


Angela Genusa, "Gnanam Match Works" (6 Sep 2005)
un violon d'ingres

Coffee Stains and Rubber Stamps

Dan Waber sends me my favorite so far in his alphacard series. The poem is, obviously, about itself, about a ring left by a coffee cup. In this case, the imperfect coffestained O begins the word "oops" that refers to the stain. The other side of the card also includes another coffee stain, almost as if the stain has seeped through to the other side.


Dan Waber, "Oops" (2 Sep 2005)
un violon d'ingres

Torsion

Mick Boyle--who pencils onto the front of the card the message, "Summer seems so short"--sends me another study on natural forms. Not that this includes not just the red and green torsos fo two men but also the foggy outline of a chalky moth. Another fetching design by Mick.


Mick Boyle, Red and Green Torsos (2 Sep 2005)
un violon d'ingres

Memories of Katrina

A.A. Berry, who lives in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, one of Hurricane Katrina's targets, sent me this simple postcard, which explains that Katrina left enough damage in its Mississippian wake. I passed through Hattiesburg on August 20th, nine days before Katrina hit, and two days before that I ate lunch there. It was in perfect shape both times, but I wonder what it's like now.


A.A. Berry, "KATRINA WAVES HELL-O" (Sep 2005)
un violon d'ingres

Somewhere in Oklahoma

Pablo Wright sends me another of his political postcards of a limited edition block print, and once again he clearly explains his point in a label attached to the back of the card:

The American public has a short attention span. Long after the present administration has left office and our roads and schools are crumbling, our public institutions and programs lie in waste, and our land, water and atmosphere are a toxic cocktail, we will blame whoever is in office. Few will remember the policies and crimes of the government that drove us to ruin.

We will be too busy praying to the only state sanctioned god.

Pablo Wright, "Return to Normal" (1 Sep 2005)
un violon d'ingres

Daily Life Collage

Angela Genusa's card this time includes a remarkably three-dimensional collaqge that inclues old postage stamps, cut-up cigarete packages, and other cultural effects. Given the fact that the stamps are "airmail" stamps and the collage includes a prominently placed USAirways luggage tag, this collage seems to be about airflight--even if the only airline passenger is this card.


Angela Genusa, "Skip the line" (Aug 2005)
un violon d'ingres

Huths and Huthing

The title above is my own translation of the phrase "Hats and Archives" (where "Huth" is understood to be nothing more than the older German spelling of the word "hat" and where archives is what one Huth does). Roy Arenella sends me the card below (which is from the National Archives) and sticks a 20-cent stamp National Archives stamp of Abe Lincoln in a tall hat and George Washington--so he has hats and archives on both sides of the card.


Roy Arenella, "Hats & Archives" (31 Aug 2005)
This card is # 164cc (one of the c's of which means "card," but what about the other c?). Roy also corrects the number of the last card, which he explains should have been 162pc--where "pc" does stand for "postal card--instead of uspc.

un violon d'ingres

Speak Zaum to Power

Jim Leftwich sends me an envelope filled with 3-by-5-inch index cards upon which he has stmped all types of colorful shapes and letters. These pieces suggest text without clearly being text. All of these are part of Jim's "Speak Zaum to Power" series.


Jim Leftwich, Two Collage Stampings (31 Aug 2005)
un violon d'ingres

Gee, Why Do You Growl So?

Dan Waber has made it to G in his alphacards series. Here a brown G gives visual voice to a guttural "argh."


Dan Waber, "arGh" (30 Aug 2005)
un violon d'ingres

Taking the L through the Mails

Jukka-Pekka Kervinen sends me another in his unending series of beautiful letteral collages, this one much in the manner of Jim Leftwich, whom Jukka is closely allied with. Here the L's in the piece are barely outlined in ink, so that they appear as specters of L's, rather that in-the-flesh L's.


Jukka-Pekka Kervinen, ELLs (31 Aug 2005)
un violon d'ingres

Against Touchless Art

I do not receive many mailings from Gustave Morin, but each is a tiny joy, the back of which is covered with blanket of handwriting that barely leaves space for the sender's addresss. (He never includes his own address.) This mailing one is a thick white card, specifically of the type used to identify works of art in a gallery, and the message on the card tells us not to touch the art--an ironic message in the world of mailart.


Gustave Morin, "Please do" (27 Aug 2005)
un violon d'ingres

Leaving the Herd and the Scene

Roy Arenella has created another beautiful little visual micro-essay on this card. His message is a simple one about the need for artists to think for themselves, to find their own way, to be true to their own muses. Somehow, Roy put togerh this beautiful little card (his handwriting always entrances me) while unable to get back to sleep at three o'clock one morning.


Roy Arenella, "So Many Art-" (29 Aug 2005)
un violon d'ingres

Hotel Bliss

I am always reading this beautifl silver collage--the angel as matchbook cover--as the Hotel Bliss, since "Bliss Hotel" is so much less enthralling. Why do I find such a simple thing so pleasing? The color? The words? The simplicity of it?


Angela Genusa, "Bliss Hotel" (27 Aug 2005)
un violon d'ingres

Don't Be a Robot

Pablo Wright sends this limited edition block print along with an anti-consumerist message affixed to the back of the card on a sticker. That message goes something like this:

Rage against the Robot! The Robot is Raging Against You.The American people are exposed to over 1500 advertisements a day. Media conglomerates alter news and entertainment programming transforming communication into propaganda for profit. True to the definition of propaganda, the people do not realize that they are being reprogrammed into compliant consumers. Suitably hypnotized, the public offers little objection to advertisemnts and propaganda posting as news on news programs. Corporate media and government propaganda are one and the same.

Pablo Wright, "ROBOT" (25 Aug 2005)
un violon d'ingres

A Stitch this Time

frips is always sending me cards to which she has stitched various other pieces. To receive one of her stitched corrugated cardboard cards is a joy indeed. But this time she has surprised me with a beautiful blockprint in Prussian blue of a sewing machine, making her card both stitching and about stitching. (She also kindly explained to me that "Koer," the word over the door in the picture, is "old dutch for W.C. (in old cafes) (open backspace).")


frips, "KOER" (24 Aug 2005)
un violon d'ingres

The Story of Fang

Dan Waber is slowly releasing, in editions of 100, potato-printed cards for each letter of the alphabet. With this letter, he has made it to F, where the top of the F in the word "Fang" curves into a fanglike point, and where pinkish-red paint splatters like blood across the face of the card.


Dan Waber, "Fang" (Aug 2005)
un violon d'ingres

ViZine!'s Vlope

I received from Jimi Camero (AKA ViZine!--I think) a huge pile of cultural leavings: leaflets, instruction manuals, cards, and lots of little ATCs like the one below. This is a form of mailart I haven't seen much of recently, and I don't know why not. I see such mailings as little time capsules sent from one artist to another. My almost-never-issues mailartzine, Film Clips, uses the same technique.


Jimi Camero, "Secure the Universe" (22 Aug 2005)
un violon d'ingres

Exclamations in the Night

Creating his card on the 22nd of August 2005, Roy Arenella carefully silhouettes a giant keystoning exclamation point on the back of his postal card. The exclamation point takes no ink itself; it is but the white that blocks our view of the black background. Visual works like this force us into a struggle between positive and negative space as we try to determine what part we should foreground and which part to let slip into the background.


Roy Arenella, "!" (22 Aug 2005)
On the front of the card, Roy let's us know that this is card # "157 USPC" (where "USPC," I suppose, means "United States postal card," but I could be wrong). And he explains himself thus: "Re: Some recent blog entries." So I know he is congratulating me on a few blog entries from just before August 22nd. The use of a small fleur de lis rubberstamping and of a 20-cent "Louisiana World Exposition" stamp affixed to the face of the three-cent postal card (to ensure that it bears sufficient postage for the hour-long trip to me) tells me he has my postings from New Orleans (from just before Hurricane Katrina) in mind.

un violon d'ingres

The Art of Stamping

John M. Bennett is about the busiest person in mailart and underground literature, even since the folding of his long-running zine, Lost and Found Times, early this year. He sent me this mailing soon after I'd visited him and written a little blog entry on him and his home, and on the outside of the envelope he says, "Now I have to imagine your house--you should do a self-visit, eh?"

Inside the envelope, John included a little pamphlet, an add-n-pass sheet, and a couple of wonderful rubberstamped visual poems. These seem to spell out words, but the meaning of these words is anything but clear.


John M. Bennett, "UAtscrio" (13 Aug 2005)
un violon d'ingres

Artists Trading Cards and Other Things

What I enjoy about Jassy Lupa's mailart is how she breaks the rules of this ostensibly ruleless art. Her art is about careful beauty instead of churning and chaos. She often sends her art in the form of notecards. And sometimes, as with this card, she sends thank-you notes. So here you have a couple of examples of her work, one of them a notecard and the other an ATC.


Jassy Lupa, Two Portraits (22 Aug 2005)
un violon d'ingres

Found Idle Ego Poem

Found poems appear wherever we find them, and Luc Fierens has found one in an error message. What appears to make this scrap of text memorable is that it repeats Luc's name over and over again. What I like about it is that I can barely figure out what any of it means, which makes is a perfect hermetic poem.


Luc Fierens, "A Message: Found Poetry" (21 Aug 2005)
un violon d'ingres

Wordveloped

Musicmaster sends me an envelope decorated with a couple of exophthalmic fish (and what you cannot see is that the body of the partial fish on the front of the envelope continues onto the premlip, which is now folded over to the other side). Inside there are a number of items, including an announcement for the show, "Writers as Visual Artists" (which includes material by Tom Cassidy--a man with many features in common with Musicmaster--and which is illustrated with another one of these envelopefish); the May 27, 2005, issue of Internal Rhyme edited by Musicmaster; and the drawing of the word-balloon people visible below.


Musicmaster, Word-Balloon-Headed People and Envelopefish (19 Aug 2005)
un violon d'ingres

A Stitch this Time

frips is always sending me cards to which she has stitched various other pieces. To receive one of her stitched corrugated cardboard cards is a joy indeed. But this time she has surprised me with a beautiful blockprint in Prussian blue of a sewing machine, making her card both stitching and about stitching.


frips, "KOER" (24 Aug 2005)
un violon d'ingres

surrrrrrreal visssssssions

Jassy Lupa sends me an illustrated notecard in an illustrated envelope (with the postage stamp at the wrong corner of the envelope to add a little interest) in response to qbdp # 82, "aRroW." She notes the Arabic-like features of this fidgetglyph and how surreal my card is (particularly on the side invisible to weblog-viewers), and she replies with her own surreal creations.


Jassy Lupa, "surreal" (18 Aug 2005)
un violon d'ingres

Thumbprinted

Dan Waber occasionally writes on cards with his fingertips, using a thick paint that slathers onto the page thickly, so thickly that it appears that he'd need a thumb to get the paint on. This card arrived with my initials upon it, but he has also sent out similar cards (with different initials) to different artists he's connected with (for example, Bob Grumman). After all, this is a contest of letters.


Dan Waber, "Playing to the Judge in the Best Letters of All-Time Contest," version "GH" (18 Aug 2005)
un violon d'ingres

Grouchy Eating

Reusing another already-used postal card (this one written to Mabel Giles of East Baldwin, Maine, by Clara Mabel on September 10th of 1940), Scott McDonald provides us with a grouchy looking face consisting of two green-pea (and P) eyes and a chopstick. Why so crabby? Maybe because of the difficulty of eating peas with just a single chopstick.


Scott McDonald, "2 peas 1 chop stick" (16 Aug 2005)
un violon d'ingres

Two Days from Breda

On the ides of August, and two days before he was set to move to Breda, Ruud Janssen wrote me a note (written on the back of a Ray Johnson postcard) that apologized for his bombardment of me with postcards and that said he'd need months to unpack after this move. This was the last mailing I received from a while from Ruud. I'm just amazed that Ruud found the time to paint this nice envelope as he was packing to move.


Ruud Janssen, "The nice thing about mail-art is that" (1990; envelope, 15 Aug 2005)
un violon d'ingres

Writing on Stony Beach

RF Cote went to the beach this summer but could not find the sand, so he wrote me (and a few others) a message on a stony memo sheet about his situation.


RF Côté, "MESSAGE" (14 Aug 2005)
un violon d'ingres

More cards'n'stoffe

Ficus strangulensis sent me another batch of his "cards'n'stoffe." One of the cards (not shown) is a detail from a sheet (also not shown) sent to me in the month of August from Pablo Wright. The card I am showing is a bit different from Fike's usual output, probably because it's a bit of an homage to The Haddock.


Ficus strangulensis, "with a tip of the Strangulensis hat to The Haddock" (31 Jul 2005)
un violon d'ingres

Mailart in the Schools

Today, my wife Nancy Huth began her second annual mailart unit in her creative writing class. As examples, I gave her the ten pieces listed right below this note. Nancy is a stickler for accuracy, so the assignment requires her students to mail their project to her at home. I'm looking forward to seeing what the kids come up with (one of the possible themes is "Thursday," which sounds just right to me). Once the projects are in, I'll post a few of them for the approval of "professional" mailartists.

un violon d'ingres

Mailart Archives

For his third card to me in a single day, Ruud painted the word "flux" in two parts onto a card. He has separated the X from the rest and put it on the other side of a river of paint ("flux" being a wordbeing for "flow"). This makes us pay more attention to the X, the inconceivable, the unknown. And, of course, it reminds us of Fluxus.

On the reverse of the card, Ruud asks me why I do with all the mailart I receive and assumes that I make some kind of archives out of it all. That is the truth. But here's the full story:

I'm behind on writing about the mailart I receive, but that is my first step. This is akin to "accessioning" for me (an archival term I won't bore you with the definition of). Next I place the mailart in folders by artist and then chronologically. This proves quite useful to me when I want to find an old piece of mailart sometime. The folders I use are pH-neutral and acid-free. (I buy them myself, and they're not cheap, but they help keep my collection in good shape. I also folder all the leaflets and booklets I receive, which can be quite a few over the course of a year.)

Last year, I collected about two cubic feet of mailart (that is two boxes 10 X 12 X 15 inches in size). I store my more recent mailart with my correspondence--appropriately enough--but I have only six cubic feet of filing cabinet space for these. So every year I have to box up some of my older mailart.

I also try to protect the pieces in my folders by isolating acidic materials with slips of pH-neutral paper, etc. One of my more recent problems is that my house is a bit humid during the summer, and Ruud's painted cards started to stick to one another. So now I have to think about separating all the cards from one another and about keeping the pressure on the cards as light as possible.

The big question is what will I do with my mailart collection. There are a few archives that will probably accept my papers into their collections (and I have had one offer already), so eventually these archives will probably find their way into a professional archives, making me one of the few archivist whose own papers are in an archives.


Ruud Janssen, "X Flu" (13 Aug 2005)
un violon d'ingres

Padre y hijo

When Mick Boyle sent me this card, the summer was still in full swing, and he noted that the summer was slipping by serenely. But now we are in the fall already. Time passes on. And Mick's card this time is about a father and a son, showing the thick fingers of one and the smiling face of the other. Somehow, though, both these portraits seem to fit together and suggest the connection between fathers and sons.


Mick Boyle, "Father and Son" (Aug 2005)
un violon d'ingres

Busy

On the 13th of August (once again, the day after he created his last mailing to me), Ruud Janssen put together a two-card, one-painting card for me. Once I put the two pieces together, I can see the wordpainting Ruud has made. The main text of the card reads "Was Bezet," which I'm guessing means "was occupied," which I'm hoping really means "busy," because Ruud was certainly busy at this time, since he was preparing to move.

But on the main text, Ruud has painted a subtext (or, literally, a supertext): Geof an Huth bee en eat aha so called art za zoof. This is a little harder for me to fathom, but Ruud is certainly riffing on the idea that mailart is less than art in most people's eyes. Another intriguing card from the mind of Ruud Janssen.


Ruud Janssen, "Was Bezet" (13 Aug 2005)
un violon d'ingres