The Cheeks of Our Typefaces: "wiimmy faces" (qbdp # 53)

Marriott Trenton Lafayette Yark, Room 532, Trenton, New Jersey

Breaking with the pattern of including Ruud Janssen in each of my recent mailings--sorry, Ruud!--I created a mailart mailing with the smallest list of recipients ever: four. The ostensible reason for this was that I had only four of the same size of 140lb Canson Montval Watercolor paper cards. But it took me a long time to create each instance of the fidgetglyph for this mailing. I used my fine-point retractable fountain pen to outline and fill in each of the letters on these cards. I took at least twenty minutes per card just to wraw the glyph. Because of this, I wrote only very brief notes on each card.

Here are the few and fortunate recipients of "wiimmy faces" (qbdp # 53):

1/4 Ruth and Marvin Sackner

2/4 Bob Grumman

3/4 Roy Arenella

4/4 qbdp

Mailart Station, Trenton, New York



Geof Huth, "wiimmy faces" (28 Apr 2005)
un violon d'ingres

A Night in an Airport Far from Home: "starnight" (qbdp # 52)

O'Hare International Airport, United Terminal, Chicago, Illinois

I created this entire mailing, from conception of the content on, while sitting at a tiny round table at a Starbuck's coffee shop in Chicago O'Hare. I had just finished dinner, and I cleared the table and pulled out my mailart supplies. (I later described the creation of this card here, so I won't repeat it here.) Because these cards were simple to create, I spent a good deal of time providing calligraphically interesting recipient addresses on the cards.

These are the people who received "startnight" (qbdp # 52):

1/5 Ruth and Marvin Sackner

2/5 Bob Grumman

3/5 Roy Arenella

4/5 Ruud Janssen

5/5 qbdp

Geof Huth, "starnight" (27 Apr 2005)
un violon d'ingres

A Simple Wrawing: "hubrise" (qbdp # 51)

Wyndham Chicago, Room 1021, Chicago, Illinois

I brought with me to Chicago a handful of fidgetglyphs I recently created. From that collection, I chose a glyph to recreate tonight. On a set of three pair of different Pressed Wafer postcards (9 Columbus Square, Boston, Mass. 02116), I wrew "hubrise" in red, added the colophon in blue, and finished with the recipient's address in green.

The recipients of "hubrise" (qbdp # 51) were the following:

1/6 Ruth and Marvin Sackner

2/6 Bob Grumman

3/6 Roy Arenella

4/6 Ruud Janssen

5/6 Jukka-Pekka Kervinen

6/6 qbdp

Geof Huth, "hubrise" (26 Apr 2005)
un violon d'ingres

The United Colors of "ExElEncE" (qbdp # 50)

Best Western, Room 228, Monticello, New York

An unexpected trip to New York's Sullivan County led to a simple card adorned with a multi-colored visual pwoermd. I designed the pwoermd tonight and added it to six cards. Because I was in a rush tonight, I didn't add a true message to the back of any of the cards; I just held three pens together, and wrote a set of parallel blue, red, and black squiggles.

The fortunate recipients of "ExElEncE" were as follows:

1/6 Ruth and Marvin Sackner

2/6 Bob Grumman

3/6 Roy Arenella

4/6 Ruud Janssen

5/6 Jassy Lupa

6/6 qbdp

Geof Huth, "ExElEncE" (11 Apr 2005)
un violon d'ingres

My Celtic Past: "A OMN e" (qbdp # 49)

The Brae Loch Inn, Room 17, Cazenovia, New York

I'm now a corporate mailartist, planning out my work before I head off on my business trips.

Today, I took a selection of my found cream postcards (upon which I'd already stamped an image in red), added a sticker to the back celebrating the New York State Archives's twenty-five years of excellence (as of 2003), and added a small note to each correspondent, and I had myself a card to mail out.

The image I stamped on the front was a "stamplage" (an eraser carving carved out of a collage of an image and added text). I made only a few of these ever, but they are some of my favorite visual poems, especially since I ca, n stamp out new originals of the poem at will.

Here is a list of the recipients of "A OMN e" (qbdp # 49):

1/8 Ruth and Marvin Sackner

2/8 Bob Grumman

3/8 Roy Arenella

4/8 Ruud Janssen

5/8 Jukka-Pekka Kervinen

6/8 Nancy Huth

7/8 Erin Huth

8/8 qbdp

Mailart Station, Brae Loch Inn, Cazenovia, NY (8 Apr 2005)


Geof Huth, "A OMN e" (8 Apr 2005)
un violon d'ingres

An Envelope of Poem: "all of it of now" (qbdp # 48)

Hampton Inn, Room 369, Victor, New York

When I wasn't reading Robert Lax tonight, I was working on this mildly complicated little mailart mailing. I'd planned it sometime last night, so I arrived in Victor with some of the pieces prepared, but I had to figure out what to put on the card.

Starting from the outside, I began used a small cream envelope made out of laid paper, and with the premlip on the side instead of the top edge. I added a stamping of my return address in black on the premlip, the recipient's address in red, and a giant Native American crafts stamp (for US recipients). Inside the envelope, I added a card, folded in half, and made of blood-red laid paper. I added the colophon in pen to the back of the card. On the front of the card, I drew a title doodle followed by a small barely-visual poem I wrote tonight.

The poem is barely visual because I left the tittle off every minuscule i, except for the i in the word spring. Welcome to the warmer season.

Every envelope also include a little mailart announcement or enclosure that I'd received in multiples from one of my mailart correspondents.

The recipients of "all of it of now" (qbdp # 48) were the following:

1/12 Ruth and Marvin Sackner

2/12 Bob Grumman

3/12 Roy Arenella

4/12 Ruud Janssen

5/12 Jassy Lupa

6/12 Mick Boyle

7/12 Nadja Sayej

8/12 RF Côté

9/12 Reed Altemus

10/12 Jukka-Pekka Kervinen

11/12 Gail Fischer

12/12 qbdp

Here's a view of my mailart-creation station in the hotel in Victor, New York:


Mailart Station, Victor, NY (6 Apr 2005)

Geof Huth, "all of it of now" (6 Apr 2005)
un violon d'ingres

The Rights Thing

Today, I finally finished the week-long process of adding to a card and sending it back. I have no idea why things like this take me so long, but they apparently do. I added stampings and drawing last week sometime, and today I covered over the address to me with labels and addressed it to Frips. I'll mail it off tomorrow.


Geof Huth, Additions to Frips' Card (3 Apr 2005)
Since my mailart is usually made in editions, this is one of the few pieces I won't retain a real copy of--though I do have this scanned image. To see the stark beauty of this card before I added to it, go here.

un violon d'ingres

Peeking through a Postcard

The front of this card from R. F. Côté (a green surface decorated with stamps and stampings and writing) includes the note "if i could only run away...too much snow!" Ah, but the snow has been disappearing from our part of the world, and I bet the R. F. is free from its grip by now.

The back of the card is where much of the action is. Apparently, R.F. has glued down the captured face of an eyeglassed woman to the card and pasted a glossy-paper image of a Canada Post mailbox over the face, allowing but the eyes of the woman to peer out through the mailslot. The card also tells me to write a message upon a postage stamp glued onto the surface upside-down. Lots of mailing and mailart references bundled into a simple card.


R. F. Côté, "Write your message here" (5 Mar 2005)
And, hey, I got around to writing about this card before it was even a month old!

un violon d'ingres

Going Snowshoeing? Dutch or Not?

Once again, Ruud Janssen sends me one of his wonderful painted postcards. I am so attuned to snow and snowmeaning that (even though all the snow has disappeared from my area until next winter) I cannot see the two objects on this card as anything but snowshoes. Maybe they are snowshoes walking through the mud, and we have plenty of that around here after these last couple of days of snowmelt and rain.


Ruud Janssen, 05-059 (6 Mar 2005)
On the back of the card, Ruud leaves me a note that includes the following:

Notice the new postage-stamps..... Are they Dutch?

Well, two of them are Dutch (Netherlandish?) 39-Eurocent stamps, but the third is a Japanese stamp. Now, what is Ruud doing here? More on this issue when I catch up a little more on my mailart receipts and announce the successful arrival of a certain (and ostensibly anonymous) envelope from Ruud.

un violon d'ingres

Making Me an Honest Mailartist

Ruud Janssen sent me a red-, white-, and blue-striped painted envelope last month (number 1 of 10 in a series, so I'm doubly blessed). Inside the envelope, he included a number of add-and-pass pieces (which I will collect together with my other add-and-pass stuff and send out in some qbdp mailing soon). But he also included this certificate, which formalizes my status as a member of the International Union of Mail Artists. (I hope we've negotiated better working conditions and higher pay, because I can always use both of those.)


Geof Huth's IUOMA Certificate of Membership
(21 Feb 2005)
un violon d'ingres

Extendended to Mayberry

Scott McDonald has left Georgia and is now based in South Carolina. His change of venue has allowed him a chance to visit Mt Airy, North Caroline, which is apparently the real Mayberry, the fictional town where the US TV classic, "The Andy Griffith Show," took place. A lucky man, Scott.

Scott sends me a quirky little pwoermd, which he has deftly placed within that part of an American postcard reserved for the US Postal Service's barcodes. The postal service realized that art was being made in this case, so it declined to mar the poem with a barcode.


Scott McDonald, "extendended" (26 Feb 2005)
un violon d'ingres

Mothnight

Jassy Lupa sent me a little card a little over a month ago. On the front of the card is a dark and stylish Olmec-like statuary head signed by Jassy in gold ink (so I assume that Jassy both created this image and printed it onto the card). On the reverse of the card, she includes an accomplished block-carving print (of a luna moth seemingly at night), which reminded me of the late-1980s and early-1990s when eraser-carving was prevalent in the mailart world and I used to trade carved (not "craven") images. Jassy's note on this card refers to my last trip to New York City.


Jassy Lupa, "Luna Moth" (25 Feb 2005)
un violon d'ingres

The Sound of Reading Color with a Woodwind: "read" (qbdp # 47)

Wingate Inn, Room 521, Garden City, New York

This second card of the week has two features in common with the first: 1. I created the card the morning I was leaving the hotel, rather than during the traditional night before; and 2. I extra-illustrated the card with a sticker celebrating twenty-five years of excellence at the New York State Archives. (No-one at work seemed to appreciate my joke that twenty-five years of excellence wasn't too bad for an organization fifty years old. [No, no, we were only twenty-five years old at the time, but that was two years ago. The reason I'm using the stickers is that we have no continuing need to celebrate a two-year-old anniversary.])

The postcard I used advertised the "Campaign for Fiscal Equity," which promoted equitable school aid across New York State. I inserted the Archives sticker as the middle panel in the triptych on the front of the card, then I wrote a simple two-color, four-word fidgetglyph on the back of the card.

The recipients of "read" are the following lucky people:

1/7 Ruth and Marvin Sackner

2/7 Bob Grumman

3/7 Roy Arenella

4/7 Ruud Janssen

5/7 Scott McDonald

6/7 Mick Boyle

7/7 qbdp

This entry includes a special feature: A photograph of my mailart-creating station on the fifth floor (take heed, Ruud!) of the Wingate Inn in Garden City, New York. I took this picture the day before I created the mailart, but this is where it happened. You can see my pens on the desk.


Geof Huth's Mailart Station, Wingate Inn, Room 521,
Garden City, New York (31 March 2005)

Geof Huth, "read" (1 April 2005)
un violon d'ingres