Saturday, January 22, 2011

More of MailArt365 and what I did today.

Homage to Christo
 Friday's Mail Art for the 365 project was based around some images that I had from one of the Sotheby catalogs that I'd found in the street in New York last year. What to do with all those cool paintings that sold for millions?
Homage to Karel Appell

Homage to Calder
 And didn't these legs lying around the studio fit perfectly?





I put the backgrounds (the paintings) on the blank cards and just looked at them for awhile. I was wishing I had more legs but, alas, no legs in my tins, or none that I could easily find. What to do what to do?

Then I came across some people working on art restoration in one of my old, old National Geographic Magazines.



Except for Karel, who gets a child inspecting him with a magnifying glass.


These are early examples of the artists' work, too. I didn't even recognize the Hockney as one of his paintings.



Homage to David Hockney











It's fun to see what I can pair up, what kind of narrative I can create.
 Today's two pieces of Mail Art are so minimalist. No narrative at all.  What happened was that I was pondering what I was going to do, I looked to my left, and there was this paper just waiting there to be glued down.
 I like the simplicity, the calm effect. It's really easy to see how quantity and proximity effect color.
 This afternoon, we went to see John Whiting at Antique Village up on Route 301. We hadn't been up there in a long time,  so this was a real treat. There was an article about John this week in Style Weekly and lots of people were at the shop because of that. Good publicity.
 It was difficult to photograph all of the goodies in the shop. So much paper stuff. You can find magazines like Look, Life, Time, True Love, Jet, old sheet music, books, advertisements, sports magazines, on and on, if it's paper John's got it.
I bought a few little items and a couple magazines. Lots of the material is collectible and I'd feel badly cutting it up for collage. I could scan but I like the feeling of cutting and gluing. It's so kindergarten! Such fun.

Another cool thing, John asked me if I'd come to a meeting of the Postcard Club and talk about Mail Art. They're all about collecting and exhibiting old postcards and know nothing about Mail Art. It'll be fun. He said they don't pay any honorarium but I'd get a tee-shirt! Hey, will work for tee-shirt.

3 comments:

PostMuse said...

I would love to haunt a shop like John's. And like you, I could resist cutting up vintage ephemera. I have cut up so much vintage, it would make an archivist cry.

I hope you'll post about your talk with the postcard collectors! My Orphaned Postcard Project was born partly because a long ago neighbor was a postcard collector and when she died, her husband put the collection out with the trash when he finally cleaned house. I rescued them :-)

Margie said...

Wonderful post, love the cards! So enjoyed our chat yesterday Mim, kindred spirit. Hugs, Margie

PrixMadonna said...

I love reading about your process, Mim.

How did I get into this?

I was asked when I started doing Mailart. Good question. Like many artists, I was making and mailing art without even knowing it had a name ...