Continuing "Continuing Signs"

Roy Arenella's first piece of mailart to me for the year is also the first piece of mailart he released into the wilds of the postal system this year. I am honored.

This big and beautiful card is part of his series "Continuing Signs," which captures interesting textual signs in their native environments, focuses our attention on them, and shows the discontinuities in their messages. This time, we have an image emblazoned with the word "IMAGERY" over a few scraggly texts taped to a wall. Roy has seen fit to entitle this piece (nearly 20 years old now) "Word."


Roy Arenella, "WORD" (1986)
The card is number 1 CXP/C (which means it is the first mailing of the year and also a color xerox photocard). Along with a few other notes, Roy includes this interesting background on his photograph:

The photo was taken in the lobby of what is generaly known here as a "welfare hotel". What is not known, generally, is that the poet James Schuyler in 1978 was forced by personal contingencies to live there--a place where the ambiance is not conducive to writing good poetry.

un violon d'ingres