Thursday - update on Mail Art, my workshop, and cuties!

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 I presented a workshop this afternoon, for teachers of grades pre-K through high school. It was very energizing! The participants were engaged and, hopefully, got a lot to take back to their classrooms.

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 I'm posting all of the Mail Art that I've made this week, to date.

I'm going to be away from the computer for awhile, and though I'll be making daily mail are, I won't be able to scan and post it until next week.

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 Then I'll have MORE catch-up to do.


I'm happy with the way these are turning out with my limited resources.

This is helping me to see how my studio, when I return to it, can be simplified.









This is a good challenge for me.












I was surprised by this one after I scanned it an noticed how dimensional it is.











I was cutting out a lot of squares and punching out circles for my workshop.

I decided that it was time for a minimal square collage.









So simple, so minimal, and yet, a lot of action.












Found a scrap of an image of art work by Boetie. It's a weaving with letters of the alphabet in it. I love the bright colors.









The addition of the circle made the composition more "complete" for me.

Behind this plastic is my studio. It's getting dried out. I think that construction may happen faster than I originally thought. YAY!

 Here's Bizoo, hanging out in the crowded side porch. My studio space is to the left behind the wall. I'd set up the iron board, turned to get some water for the iron, and quicker than a blink of my eye, Bizoo was on my shirt! Cats are amazing in that they suss out just the place to lay down that you don't want them to lay day. He was purring loudly.

We received this fabulous photo this morning. Zinn in repose!

So long for now. See you in a few.

Sunday: update on rooms, Mail Art, and more

 Here's my terribly messy studio, which I'd planned on straightening up this summer.

 Here's my studio as of this morning. The clearing up and out happened sooner than I thought.

That pesky draining A/C unit created a waterfall in the wall dividing my studio and the TV room.

I'm a bit tired but, surprisingly, not cranky about this. Just tired.

 Here is my temporary studio, that I set up on the enclosed side porch off of our bedroom. I have a nice view to my right, of the big tree in the back garden. Not sure where this lap top will go. Perhaps after I cut up a bazillion black squares using my paper cutter, I'll put the computer on that little table.  I think I've kept essentials at hand.

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These are Friday's Mail Art pieces. I like the paleness of them. A bit of topo map, some Washi tape, and my new circle dots rubber stamp.

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Saturday's Mail Art: some more topo map scraps, stickers from a map sticker set, and since I didn't think the compositions were working, I added an ink swoosh! Yes! That works.

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More topo maps in today's Mail Art.

Most of my stuff had been moved to the new space but the work area was in the old so what to use. I started with two pieces of paper torn from a magazine print of a Leger painting.


I put a piece of topo map behind the bits. Glued down, they looked okay, but not great.

I still had my tin of Washi tape handy, so I added bands of tape and that just made the composition work for me.
Tomorrow's Mail Art will be made in the new space. I'll be able to get out of bed and just steps away will be my studio! Nice!

 Here's Bizoo. He's exhausted from helping out, jumping in and out of boxes, checking out where things were going, watching stray ants on the window sill, tossing scraps of paper. He does like this perch on the old high chair which is in my new studio space.

And here's the cutie pie, Baby Z. Can you believe it? She's 3 months old, and looking so serene.

Thursday update - could be worse!

 Here's Bizoo on my lap. See that black and white checker tile area? Well, that will be gone soon. It's been there for 25 years! Hard to believe. Now, because of the water damage to the tiny TV/guest room (N's childhood room) and to my studio (M's childhood room) the tiles have to be ripped up. And maybe the floors.

 See that little square on the wall? That's a tiny collage in a tiny plastic bag. It's got water in it! The assessor took a photo of it to show how much water we had coming down the wall. I'm glad I saved it to show him. This wall will be torn open.  The ceiling above it will also be torn open. Everything needs to be dried out. Then reconstruction can begin. I have to pack up everything I need for 2 to 6 weeks, like my art supplies. I'll set up shop in a corner of our bedroom. I'll have limited supplies & space so it's a good thing that
a) I work small and b) I like to work minimally.

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Here's yesterday's Mail Art using a part of an old photo and a library card. I stamped some rubber stamps on it.

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The company working on the rooms will bring me boxes tomorrow to pack my supplies and other personal stuff like photo albums, fabric, etc.






On Tuesday, the company will arrive with packers who will pack up the books, furniture, other stuff and take it to storage.

I can't believe it. I'm so happy that I don't have to do it all.  Like wrestle a futon into submission and then find some place to store it? Couldn't have done that.

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Still, I'll have a lot of work to do, packing all the little doo-dads I've got all around me. Tiny sculptures, stuff I need to do my workshops, supplies, and should I let them pack up my boxes of received Mail Art and store that?

Okay, tomorrow is another day. Time to rest my mind from all this.





I'm grateful that this isn't any more involved, grateful for the help, grateful for good attitudes, and I did say that I wanted to clean up my studio this summer, so now I'm forced to do it. So it goes.

And there's always Zinn, and Bizoo, to distract me, make me smile!

Tuesday, a very rainy day.

 I was looking out the upstairs back window to see if the rain had finally stopped and saw that my dogwood was in bloom! This is amazing. It's a late bloomer and is very different looking. It's a shade tolerant hybrid. It has an off kilter shape because early on, a limb from the big tree fell on it and tore off a small branch. I'm so happy it's blooming!

 Bizoo in my studio last night. Before we started to take things apart. Stuff still on wall, all water damaged. He's sticking with me as I pack up, helping me by jumping into the packing boxes, and climbing over the paper stacks. What a good helper.

 Now he's taking a little rest, on the ironing board in the studio, next to a photo of himself resting on the kitchen chair.

 These are some sparkly, silvery butterfly appliques that my sister sent me. I've put them up for sale in my Etsy shop. I sure hope someone can think of something cool to use them for. They are silver metallic thread embroidered. Very shimmery.

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 I used an old show card from my friend Keith Long to alter. I attached the man's arm, which I scuffed up a bit, and a real four leafed-clover that was laminated. Keith makes excellent sculptures, using repurposed material. I'm going to send this to Keith.

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For today's second piece of Mail Art, I used some scraps that I "unearthed" on my work table. Oh the bits that were hidden there amazed me.

This is a collage book that I sent off to Laurence in Nancy, France for an exhibit of Carnets. I started it in Belgium in 2008, completed it just this spring. It says, in Dutch, "Welcome to the mim." Who or what "the mim" is, I don't know but I sure liked seeing my name in print.

Monday, what a day! Mail Art & more

 I purchased a tiny fan at the Dollar Tree (where everything costs $1.) I needed it the other day when it was hot and the a/c wasn't working.

We had a bad thing happen with the a/c - it sprang a leak and our upstairs front two rooms have water damage. We thought the damage was mainly in the tiny TV/guest room, but it wasn't.




Today, I started to clear out my studio so that people could come in to check on the extensiveness of the water damage.
And oh bother, it is very extensive. My studio is worse that the other room.
I discovered that the prints from my last show (Tiny Town) that were in a portfolio leaning against my table, were ruined.

Before, as it normally looks, a mess

after, a different kind of mess

 Then I discovered that prints from my New Jersey Turnpike exhibit, which were in another portfolio, were also ruined.  grrrr

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Here's my table before I started to clear it out. A big mess which I had every intention of organizing this summer.

Here is the clean up in progress. The wall is very damp. It's wall board. And very damp. The work on it was soaked. That little square that is still on it, is a small plastic bag with a tiny collage in it. It's half way filled with water!
I have two fans on to try to dry it out. All of my mail art is off of my Real Wall.
I've got boxes to store things in. Where I'll put those boxes, I don't know. Plus I have to keep my daily Mail Art supplies handy.
Oh this will be interesting.

The floor is damaged, too.

The inspectors come on Thursday. More on this after that. In the meantime, I've got lots of work to do clearing out the studio.

Oh, and we discovered that our freezer isn't freezing. Fun. More soggy stuff.

 But, I made today's Mail Art-YAY- I used my honey's photos (rejects cause the printing wasn't perfect) and altered them with the figures, circles, and random text. I realized after scanning them that the little girl looks like she's hanging from a string. Oh no, not at all, the line is behind her, really.   I like these. 

 Here's Bizoo resting on his favorite brown paper, which is so used that it's almost like fabric. No crinkle sound left in it.

Here's baby Zinn looking so spunky. She is getting quite the personality.

Sunday Mail Art, My Father, and the babies

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Keeping things simple is so satisfying for me. A scrap of paper and a postage stamp, in this case a very old Turkish postage stamp. I've been thinking about Turkey a lot because we have friends there and are getting updates.






Today, just a few scraps of color.













Another simple one with an old postage stamp. I purchased a packet of them when we were in Istanbul. They are quite old but didn't cost me very much money. I guess they aren't considered valuable, but for me - priceless.







Today's second piece. The adhesive got on the top and I couldn't get it off. grrr. I really dislike when that happens. It becomes another element.

I posted a photo of my father from 1941 on my Facebook page, last night, right after midnight. Today, my hunny found this one of my father, which was taken at his place of employment in the fall of 1968.

I think about him, and the things that he taught me. He once told me that he chose to be happy.  How good is that, to say that it's a choice one has, whether to be happy or not. And he did chose that.

 Here's the furry baby. My hunny brought him up to the bedroom in the morning, while I was still upstairs reading in bed. He ran around a bit chasing a paper ball, then hopped up on the bed to nap a bit.  Purrrr purrrpurrrrr

Here is the cutie Zinn. She was at our casa today for our Fathers' Day fiesta. 
I took lots and lots of photos, hopefully a few will be good for me to share.

She has steely blue eyes at this point.

Intense, right?