Flying Mailboxes

RF Côté, Flying Postbox Collage (27 Nov 2006)
I'm happy to report that I received a new piece of mailart from Reg. All mannet of mailboxes appear on the card, flying in formation. And if you look closely, you'll note that an artist's stamp is pasted on top of this image, a stamp that reproduces in miniature the postboxes flying already away.

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A Noted Silence

Ficus strangulensis, "cured bond" (22 Nov 2006)
The front of this card from Fike is a found scrap of text, a bit erased, and lightly contrasted. The back is a pasted note from Fike telling his mailart friends about the death of his father and how that has slowed his mailart. (Others have begun to post their copies of this card already.) Take care, Fike.

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Hands Held in Profile with Head

frips, Handheld Profile (21 Nov 2006) frips sends me a beautiful Prussian blue block printing on a simple card--no threads threading through it, but the margin of the stamps sticking over the edge as she often does, and a faintly printed text on the front of the card that I could hardly see. un violon d'ingres

Oppoetics

Roy Arenella, "OPEN / POEM" (Nov 2006)

This card from Roy is the 334th he mailed out this year. My numbers are much lower, but still it amazes me to think of the quantity of mailart, the number of pieces, one person might distribute in a year.

This is a simple card from the hand of Roy. He draws a few letters and a couple of arcing arrows (showing, I'm supposing, the different possible entryways into a visual poem). This piece is an example of Roy's oppo (optical poetry), which is clearly verbal, often quietly visual, and designed precisely to be a textual object of contemplation. Note that this poem spells two almost anagrammatic words, and that the first two lines of the poem (reading against the grain) give us the name of this form of poetry ("OPPO").

Quiet and insistent. Like a cat urging you to pet its head.

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Cornertangles

Mick Boyle, "Will you finally find" (Obverse, 15 Nov 2006)
Mick appears to like to draw radishes, since I've received a number of cards so decorated by him. They are delicate simple little things, I think (maybe) connected to the plucking of these beasts from the grip of the earth at the end of the season of growth.


Mick Boyle, "Will you finally find" (Reverse, 15 Nov 2006)
But the real "text" of this card appears to be the revers, where a bit of pencil frottage, a couple of pasted slips of paper (one enworded), and a dullish splash of silver ink come together to form a new nude crescending a staircase. The text entrances me a bit--not quite a question, certainly not a statement, it floats withing this field of corners looking for a place.

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The Light within the Wind (qbdp # 121)

"airlIGht" (qbdp # 121, 30 Nov 2006)
Holiday Inn, Room 335, Batavia, New York

After the third night of travel and mailart, I've reverted to my bare minimum number of cards: five. But even these took me a while. I had to select an appropriate fidgetglyph from the small collection I carry with me on my travels, to stamp my address on the card just right, to determine the colored inks I would use, and to create each of the five cards. This is one of my newest fidgetglyph, created yesterday in Caneadea, New York, and revised a few times until it evolved into this form.



I used an identical set of "vintage" postcards I purchased at With Pipe and Book (a used bookstore and pipe store in Lake Placid) as the canvas for my fidgetglyphing. It's a quaint little card, with a beautiful rendition of the word "Postcard" and one of those muddy landscapes common on old postcards. I thought it fit the fidgetglyph well.

The few recipients of "airlIGht" (qbdp # 121) were as follows:

1. Ruth and Marvin Sackner

2. Bob Grumman

3. Roy Arenella

4. Dan Waber

5. qbdp

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Voice of Lois, Dan, and Aubrey (qbdp # 120)

"Voici l'oiseau dans l'arbre" (qbdp # 120, 29 Nov 2006)
Webb's Lake Resort, Room 311, Mayville, New York

I'm tired from yesterday's creating and today's traveling and presenting, so I cut back to a set of a dozen cards today. (It would've been thirteen, but I produced one version of the fidgetglyph that wasn't acceptable.) This card was made more difficult by the slow addition of watercolors.


"Voici l'oiseau dans l'arbre" (Reverse, qbdp # 120, 29 Nov 2006))
The card took so long to create that I gave up on including a message on the back of each card. Instead, I used bits of the stamp sheet I was using in place of a message.

Those receiving "Voici l'oiseau dans l'arbre" (qbdp # 120) were as follows:

1. Ruth and Marvin Sackner

2. Bob Grumman

3. Roy Arenella

4. Dan Waber

5. Jukka-Pekka Kervinen

6. Wayne Alan Brenner

7. Reneé Wagemans

8. D. Mask

9. Ryosuke Cohen

10. Jassy Lupa

11. Steve Dalachinsky

12. qbdp

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Letter to Garcia, et al. (qbdp # 119)

"Dear _____" (qbdp # 119, 28 Nov 2006)
The Inn at Houghton Creek, Room 12, Houghton, New York

Sometimes, I'm a bit too ambitious, and tonight was one of those times. I decided to take twenty large postcards I picked up at the beginning of the month at the Hotel Saranac of Paul Smith's College and to write a faux epistle on the back of it to just as many people as I had postcards. The process of writing this multi-colored letter was time-consuming, but I'm drawn into the mesmery of this kind of work, even as I wear myself out (temporarily, at least) doing it.

The recipients of "Dear _____" (qbdp # 199) were as follows:

1. Bob Grumman

2. Ruth and Marvin Sackner

3. Roy Arenella

4. Dan Waber

5. Lisa Jr & Elizabeth Zois

6. Dees Stribling

7. Jay V. Stribling

8. frips

9. RF Côté

10. Ficus strangulensis

11. Mick Boyle

12. Haje Holmström

13. Pati Bristow

14. fat red ant

15. Pablo Wright

16. richard canard

17. Guy r. Beining

18. Miguel Jimenez

19. Guido Vermeulen

20. qbdp

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Fishghost

David B. Herriman, "An Outer Space Fish Ghost" (Jun 2006)
Last week at work, the postcard above appeared in my mailbox. What I find remarkable about this is that the card is not addressed to me--isn't, actually, addressed to any specific person--yet someone decided I was the person best to accept this correspondence. I never speak about mailart at work, and only occasionally about visual poetry, but somehow I became the recipient of this card. Good enough.


David B. Herriman, Note (6 Nov 2006)
It is an interesting card. Both the image on the front and the message on the back are mass-produced photocopies. Only the woefully inaccurate address is handmade. Yet, despite this mass production, the whole card reads just like a piece of mailart. Possibly without knowing it, David Herriman has become a mailartist, sending off these quirky cards making weird scientific claims.

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Alphacards

Jim Leftwich, Alphacards (9 Nov 2006)
Jim Leftwich uses index cards for art more than anyone else I know, and I remain amazed at how deftly he can use a simple technique to develop a visually stunning result. I provide a few of the cards from today's envelope as evidence.

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Hypothyroidism

Jassy Lupa, "Death to High School" (9 Nov 2006)
It is great to receive another card from Jazzy with her loose but beautiful handwriting and her careful little paintings. This one is a bit sad, corroborating Jassy's note that she's busy, working too much, and dealing with illness. My good wishes to Jassy. I'll be sure to write her a note the next time I send out a card.

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Fractal Imagination

Brain Cell 657 (31 Aug 2006)
Ryosuke Cohen, the best-named Japanese mailartist in the business, sends me another copy of his Brain Cell, this one from August 2006. I wondered why he sent me this issue, but it might because he has added one piece to this normally three-piece zine. A usual Brain Cell consists of an envelope that never needs postage stamps to be mailed to me, a large sheet of paper covered with colorful rubberstampings, and a small trifolded sheet listing all the participants in the issue and their addresses.

This issue, however, includes another sheet, folded in threes then in twos, that includes a two-page essay dated June 2006 and entitled "Mail Art --- Networking Art." This essay covers a lot of ground quickly: the importance of collaboration and sharing in mailart, his point of view that mailart is slowing down, and how artists can learn from nature.

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A Circular Rectangle

Circulaire 132 # 7, Page 2 (October 2006)
It's been a while since I've received anything from the great RF Côté of Québec, Québec—of course, that's only because I didn't send him anything for many months. And it is wonderful to receive mailart from reg again. What an imagination and what style he has. Today, I received in the mail a copy of Circulaire 132 # 7, which is something like an assembling, but reg stitches together the various pieces received from artists from all over the globe.

There is plenty of beautiful stuff here: an interesting (and short) article on V-Mail (written in French, of course), complete with illustrations, scads of artist stamps (including one by Renée Wagemans that resembles a small piece of chainmail), a little advertisement for this blog (complete with logo by Mick Boyle), a little poetry booklet produced by Richard Hansen (part of his Poems-for-All series), a little comic printed in color, a couple of collages, one of the spliced photos produced by Dan (of Portland, Oregon), and announcements on mailart projects. This is what a mailart zine is supposed to be!

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A Mailartist is Born

Jay Stribling, "Day After Guy Fawkes' Day 2006" (6 Nov 2006)
Jay Stribling, whom I've never met--along with his brother and my friend from college, Dees Stribling--are obsessed with correspondence, specifically postcards. Dees has mailed me literally hundreds of postcards over the years, and in the past couple I've begun to mail Dees postcards at quick clip as well.

But Jay I don't know. I've corresponded with him, but in a weird way, sending him messages about as personal as the one above from him. But I love his handwriting, his clear intelligence, and his interest in minute detail. And this weekend, I decided that his type of correspondence is clearly a form of mailart. He just doesn't know it, and he might not even know what mailart is. Yet here I have made him a mailartist.

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Beetleworld

frips, Beetle (5 Nov 2006)
What can I say? frips, once again, does a simple and amazing thing. This giant cut-out beetle, sewn by machine to a cardboard card is quite a beautiful surprise.

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Cashword for All

Steve Dalachinsky, "Cashword Collage" (2005 and 30 Oct 2006)
Steve sends me a collage that he describes as "cashword collage/b&w xerox of original color (w/ elements added)/dalachinsky 2005 #1 of 1." Pretty hilarious. Steve, a poet, follows this with a weird little poem on the back of the card:

LIFE's
The Thoroug

the cellf
w/in the
cell fish--

That should hold us in good stead.

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Oh, Peace Train Take This Country, Come Take Me Home Again

Pati Bristow, "Peace" (3 Nov 2006)
Pati Bristow responds to a recent card from me (one months delayed on my part) with another peace-related item, this time a postcard. On the back of the card, she let's me know of the location of her weblog.

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The Future in the Present

Roy Arenella, Two-Way Arrow (2 Nov 2006)
When I'm on schedule (which isn't nearly often enough), I post information about my qbdp mailings before anyone has a chance to receive one, so recipients could (as Roy Arenella has often noted) see what they're going to receive long before they receive them. This card of Roy's, illustrated with a double-pointed arrow (representing coming and going), includes a note from Roy in anticipation of one of my cards to him. (The other review of the card was "The Archi've one I enjoyed but feel it's more potential than fulfillment," which might be pretty accurate.) Roy's other note was that he had no "sound method for procuring" blank diaries whose sequence of dates fit particular years. I'm still looking for one that will work for 2007. I'm currently using a 1905 diary for my 2006 jottings.

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TLPs

John M. Bennett, Various Small Publications (Oct 2006)
Another small packet of mini-publications from John M. Bennett arrived in my mailbox, including a couple of tacky little pamphlets (TLPs) and a postcard. All of these are collaborations, since John subsists on collaboration.

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Flame Flower

Jim Leftwich, "Tritoma" (28 Oct 2006)
Jim sends me a small sheaf of new visual poems, including this beautiful shaped poem about, I have to assume, the flowers of the genus Tritoma. And the words bea uti full y confirm this.

ecr. l'inf.

Leaves of Fall

Jennifer Hill-Kaucher, "for The Fall Leaves Variations" (Nov 2006)
Dan Waber has released yet another card in the series, The Fall Leaves Variations, this one another one by Jennifer Hill-Kaucher. I keep reveling in her use of italics. Such a good choice for these little concrete poems, this one a simple replication of a leaf in full tumble.

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My Daughter Lives in Queens

Roy Arenella, "'Only the Dead Know Brooklyn.' But Everybody Lives in Queens" (20 Oct 2006)
I love this photograph of Roy's, and in response I'll note that I have relatives buried in Queens and my daughter lives there as well.

Most remarkable about this card is Roy's note that his wife was in Room 22A of the Beekman Towers two days before I was in Room 22E. Too bad we missed each other. But I wonder how often such things happen without my ever knowing.

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Something for Dessert

Dessert, Senior Exhibit, Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, Dallas, Texas (2 Nov 2006)
Jay Stribling, brother of my friend Dees, sends me a postcard announcing his son Robert's participation in his senior exhibition. I couldn't make it to the show, and I didn't get word out in time for anyone else to attend. And, hey, Jay doesn't even think of himself as a mailartist. So why post this card? Because I've just decided that Jay is an unknowing mailartist, and I wanted to start with a colorful card. (PS I received another copy of this card from Dees himself. Too bad I didn't show for the event.)

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An Improbable Flock of Seagulls

Dan, Seagulls in Formation (16 Oct 2006)
I received a postcard from the surnameless mailartist Dan (of Portland, Oregon), and the card consists of a wonderful bit of photographic legerdemain. Photos of twenty birds (hey, maybe they're not all seagulls) are set up in a 4X5 grid and laid against a clouded sky. It's all a strange insertion of the human hand into nature. Now, all I need to do is return a photograph to Dan, who requests such in return.

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The Word as Seeing

Roy Arenella, "Point & Shoot" (7 Oct 2006)
Roy Arenella is always pushing towards a poetry of the eye. He is the ultimate poet/photographer, merging word with image, as he does here with the simplest tools: rubberstamps. The giant round lens of the camera does double duty as an O, fully merging the visual image with the visible WORD. In the tiniest note, Roy--who can write smaller than anyone else I know--writes, "This (clearly condenses) is what I've been trying to say." Because his mailart is about making points, this poet/photographer/philosopher.

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The ABZs of Boys

Dan Waber, Boys, A-Z: A Primer (2 Oct 2006)
Dan Waber, in an impressive show of technical mastery along with a soupçon or more of Oulipian spirit, has put together a solid little booklet examining the sexavigesimal structure of our written language. What he does is this: he names each boy with each letter of the alphabet in sequence, creates a simple drawing of a boy's face out of the appropriate letter of the alphabet and a few squiggles of the pen, then he writes a four- or five-line and twenty-six-word light-verse poem about that boy.

To make this more difficult is the point of each poem: to begin each word in the sexagesimal series with a different letter of the alphabet, each letter presented in alphabetical order. So Adam's poem starts "Adam builds computers," ending with "zippers," and Oliver's begins with "Oliver Plays Quiet Riot," going to the end of the alphabet and around, ending with "now."

Dan even continues the fun into his "A Bio" and to the back-cover blurb, which goes like this:

All boys come disguised, especially from girls.
Here is juicy knowledge, lessons maybe no one
previously quilled. Relax, sit tight,
uncover villains while x-raying y-chromosome zone.

Most remarkable of all, is that these little stanzas still make literal sense!

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Broadcast IUOMA

My latest mailing from Ruud Janssen, of IUOMA central in Breda, The Netherlands, consisted mostly of notes to be and bits of advertisement for the YouTube incarnation of IUOMA, so I figure it best just to point people in that direction. See below for one of the essential videos on the site. All of this makes me wonder about the direction of mailart, away from the mails proper and towards other modes of transmission, even other modes of creation. Mailartists, of course, have always been involved in art activities beyond the world of mailart. This is just a new one.


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Neopunct

Dan Waber, "Prototypes of Punctuation for the Translation of Dreamed Poems # 3 (for Márton Koppány) (October 2006)
Dan Waber continues his interesting neopunctuation project, an homage to conceptual poet Márton Koppány, with this third numbered prototype. Ostensibly influenced by the I Ching, this piece of punctuation appears to sit at a constant lavender slant, all of which suggests some kind of connection, and some deeper meaning those of us without the secrets of the mark cannot fathom.

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Blue Lake, Blue Word (qbqp # 118)

qbdp # 118: "S/&" (5 Nov 2006)
The Hotel Saranac of Paul Smith's College, Room 412, Saranac Lake, New York

I drove up to Saranac Lake today (a Sunday, of all days) with a couple of colleagues. We will be giving a day-long workshop tomorrow in this pretty little village in my Adirondacks. It's good to be back in the mountains, and this is a nice little hotel, but I'm tired and made only the simplest of cards tonight. I've been carrying around a tiny little fidgetglyph for a while, and tonight was finally the night I wrew it in blue onto a vintage postage. On the way here, we stopped in nearby Lake Placid and visited the famous bookshop, With Pipe and Book. I found a rack of vintage cards (for a steep 75 cents apiece) and bought a couple of sets of cards.

Tonight's card appears on the back of a painted card of "Blue Mountain from Main Street, Blue Mountain Lke, N.Y. Adirondack Mountains." It was a blue-themed card of a blue-named mountain and a blue-named mountain's lake and a blue-named mountain's lake's hamlet, so I had to pick it up. Also, I love Blue Mountain Lake for many reasons.

The literal handful of recipients of "S/&" (qbdp # 118) were as follows:

1. Ruth and Marvin Sackner

2. Bob Grumman

3. Roy Arenella

4. Dan Waber

5. qbdp

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Scentsing Scomething (qbdp # 117)

qbdp # 117, “S(¢)ent” (“Obverse” 23 Oct 2006)
Westin Governor Morris, Room 401, Morristown, New Jersey

Today was a full day of meetings at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference, but I wrew a large number of fidgetglyphs as I listened to the talks today. This was good, because I've been carrying a set of five notecards (with envelopes) and “Pôeme” perfume cards (with the scent sprayed on them) for a few weeks now--just looking for a way to used them.


qbdp # 117, “S(¢)ent” (“Reverse” 23 Oct 2006)
The richness of the day's fidgetglyphing gave me the chance to use a few of the fidgetglyphs for this one project. I used “S(¢)ent” on the back of the envelope, just below the premlip. I wrew “pöemot” (Philippe Billé’s translation of “pwoermd”) on the back of the perfume card. And the “message” inside the notecard was the three-line fidgetglyph “paper.” Along with these items, I included a single penny in each envelope, to complete the scent/sent/cent pun.

The lucky recipients of “S(¢)ent” (qbdp # 117) were as follows:

1. Ruth and Marvin Sackner

2. Bob Grumman

3. Roy Arenella

4. Dan Waber

5. qbdp

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The Archives of American Mailart (qbdp # 116)

qbdp # 116, "arcH'IVE" (26 Oct 2006)
Westin Governor Morris, Room 401, Morristown, New Jersey
Today, I drove with a carload of people to the fall meeting of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference (of which I'm the chair). Although I had a long day of meetings (from 2 pm until 10 pm, with just enough of a break for a jaunt out for dinner), I did end up wrawing a few fidgetglyphs appropriate for the occasion. Late at night, I took one these, affixed it to six postcards of watercolor paper, and used my new portable watercolor set to create my first mailart using watercolors. A pretty little thing (to my eye, at least).

The lucky recipients of this small mailing of "arHI'VE" (qbdp # 116) were as follows:

1. Ruth and Marvin Sackner

2. Bob Grumman

3. Roy Arenella

4. Dan Waber

5. RF Côté

6. qbdp

Since I created the image on the front of this postcard, I saved the back for personalized messages, and I actually wrote a real note (rather than a dashed one) to each recipient (save, of course, the faux recipient, qbdp).

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Seeing in the Dark (qbdp # 115)

qbdp # 115, "S23N" (23 Oct 2006)
Marriott New York at the Brooklyn Bridge, Room 1514, Brooklyn, New York

Today was a busy day. We had a big event at work, I had to leave that as it was ending to catch a train that ended up being late, so that I arrived in New York City with barely enough time to make it to a screening of a student TV project my daughter Erin had worked on. Afterwards, I took two of her friends and her out to dinner, then I stopped at The Strand and bought a few books before I descended into the subway again and took a train across the water to Brooklyn, where I arrived in my room just before 10 pm to spend the night in Kings County for the first time ever.

I immediately created a little colorglyph and began to create cards. Originally, I'd planned to make 23 cards, since this was the 23rd of October and 23 appears within the colorglyph. As I worked on who I would send the card, however, I noticed that I owed many more mailartists a mailing (since I've been so unbusy in mailart since last fall), so I decided to use all the cards I had (35) to send out cards. This ended up being an enormous amount of work, but I finished and have about a half a pound of postcards to mail around the world. Luckily, I picked these postcards up for free at a rest area on the Northway last Friday.

The many lucky recipients of "S23N" (qbdp # 117) are as follows:

1. Marvin Sackner

2. Bob Grumman

3. Roy Arenella

4. Dan Waber

5. Ruud Janssen

6. Reed Altemus

7. A.A. Berry

8. Wayne Alan Brenner

9. Pati Bristow

10. RF Côté

11. Jimi Camero

12. richard canard

13. Ryosuke Cohen

14. frips

15. Ficus strangulensis

16. fat red ant

17. Luc Fierens

18. Haje Holmström

19. Jassy Lupa

20. Jim Leftwich

21. D. Mask

22. This Compost

23. Guy r. Beining

24. Mick Boyle

25. John M. Bennett

26. endwar

27. Billy Mavreas

28. Ross Priddle

29. Carol Stetser

30. Guido Vermeulen

31. Renée Wagemans

32. Pablo Wright

33. Lynn Jr & Elizabeth Zois

34. Steve Dalachinsky

35. qbdp

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kite tail press # 15

 
Jennifer Hill-Kaucher, A Fall Leaves Variation (22 Sep 2006)
Dan Waber mails me this card showing the graceful verbo-visual work of Jennifer Hill-Kaucher. My favorite of the variations so far (and much more so than my own attempts), this is a beautiful example of the power of the printer's fist in action.

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Simmering

 
Jim Leftwich, Rubberstamp Collage (Jul 2006)
In a mailing in the middle of September, Jim Leftwich sent me this colorful rubberstamp collage of image and text, along with a few other such creations.

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An Almost Invisible Mantra

 
Dan Waber, "oM" (2006)
I've had to change the color of this card, making it seem multi-hued, to make the M in "oM" visible. In the original, the reader almost has to imagine the M, which is block-printed on white in white.

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Letters Turning Back into Shapes

 
Roy Arenella, "Improvised Constructions" (19 Aug 2006)"
Roy shows us in card # 256 USPC, which he sent as thanks for an exhibit catalog I mailed him, that letters, which once were drawings, can become drawings again.

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Pointing Hands

 
Roy Arenella, "THEM vs. US" (28 Jul 2006)
Roy can find profound puns and make good conceptual use of them better than anyone else I know. Here a wedge of printer's fists points right at a larger printer's fist, pointing back--all suggesting conflict. But, we learn, that these accusing hands can also come into a handshake that avoids consternation.

On the back of this card (numbered 235C) Roy has rubberstamped a two-fingered, one-handed piece sign in his pseudo-cancellation mark, to continue the trope.

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When an Archives is an Ark for Everyone but the Builder

 
Roy Arenella, "ARKHIVE = HOME" (2 May 2006)
Roy put together this card as a comment to a blog posting of mine at dbqp: "Documenting a Life." Here, Roy, connects with my idea that an archives (which, to him, is both an ark that floats us out of danger and a hive of activity) is a home, the a set of files is a measure of, and the exact equal to, a life. (Roy also notes "How much better to make this card than to click on the 'comment' button" on the blog.)

Since I wrote that post at the very beginning of May, I've decided I have to move a huge percentage of my papers out of my house, at least 52 cubic feet, maybe more. (Since I've worked on these papers I've developed a better estimate of the quantity of records I hold.) So now I will be giving away my papers, starting actually today, when I'll part with ten cubic feet (ten banker's boxes, to most) of my correspondence, which includes lots of mailart and other correspondence. I'm giving away my memory to make sure it isn't totally lost.

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kite tail press # 11

 
endwar, "fall leaves" (another variation) (2006)
This is another fall leaves variation by endwar for kite tail press' larger "Fall Leaves Variations."

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