A few altered postcards

 I always write a little story on the reverse. Something about what's happening in the image like, the legs in the first image look like tap dancers so I made a story about the noise, and in the lighthouse how the giant shell appeared and the effect it had on tourism. Can you guess what I might have written about the stamps falling from the sky at the new post office? 

That Post Office building now houses the U.S. National Postal Museum and I'm happy that I was able to visit it several times. It's located right by the Railway station. This postcard is one of the ones they offered for free, so I scooped up a few, okay, maybe more than a few. I can't wait until I can travel again and visit the museum.

Catching Up, Mail Art & More

#124

#125

 I've  been having fun with a circle stencil and water soluble 9B graphite.

I added a bit of color with water color pencils.

#126

#127

#128

Cards

cards

In cleaning up my studio table, I found cool stuff to cut up into substrates. With only one added piece, I get an interesting composition.










This collage is on a piece of card stock that fits into a First Cover envelope. I made this specifically to send to someone who likes Mary Cassatt.








Here's another composition using the same substrate as in #125.












More circle Mail Art.












Here's how I created the circle pieces. I worked on large sheet of water color paper, making circles with the stencil and the graphite and pencils.


I added water and when dry, I cut the paper into Mail Art sized pieces, Artist Trading Card pieces, and left overs for book markers.

No waste!




After the pieces were cut out, I sprayed them with matte fixative.

Hmm, I'm thinking I should do the spraying before I cut them up, oh yeah, that'd be better. Right?








This is a view of the 23221 Post Office the other day. I was sitting in the parking lot and noticed that the clouds were gorgeous! Notice the light on the side of the building had come on because the light was low. The wind blowing was nice to show the flag better.








Here's my studio table post clean up. I'm so happy that I spent the time to clean up and organize. on the left is a plastic box holding received mail. I'm pulling pieces from that to send responses. On my wall, are new inspiration pieces.

I'm happier in my studio now that I have more making space on the table.

How messy does your space have to get before you clean it up?

Cité de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine

Today, our last full day in the Cité we decided to go over to this museum, which opened in 2007, and we hadn't been to it. It's housed in the Palais de Chaillot wing where the Theatre is located, the opposite wing from the old Musee de l'Homme. It has great views of the Eiffel Tower from lots of it's windows and from the top, a great view towards Sacre Coeur. I was taken by the views. The displays on the first floor were of casts of catherdral entrances, full size, it was pretty amazing. Here's C taking a photo of the back of one of the casts. There were lots of models of buildings, too. Very interesting. Upstairs, they had contemporary building models, photo intallations, and a replica of an apartment designed by le Corbusier. Another section had replicas of stained glass windows and frescos.
On the 4th floor, they had an installation of Elle Decor rooms. One room, set for a dinner party, had the walls covered in trompe l'oeil wall paper. Doesn't it look like there are open doors and hallways? Not! It's a flat wall. C might have some photos of the plaster casts, otherwise, you're left to wonder or check out the link above.

The Metro ride back was crazy. The trains were so packed with people and walking through the tunnels to get to the connecting train was a real experience. We were really happy to exit at St. Paul, into the still light evening.

This is "au revoir" from Paris, unless I'm able to get on-line before we leave on Wednesday morning. I leave you with this very cool image of the Eiffel Tower that I took today through a window (with a screen.)

Bonbons

Our friend Agnese brought us a little bag of jelly bears, this is what's left when I decided to try the "food" setting on C's camera. We didn't realize there was such a setting, which makes me sorry that I didn't use it before. Agnese was supposed to be gone already but she missed her flight by 5 minutes due to a delay on the RER train that she was taking to the airport. She surprised us at the door, when we thought she was already back in Riga, Latvia yesterday. She used our internet connection and came by this morning, also. Besides the little bears, she gave us information about an apartment on view at the Palais de Chaillot. It's in the Cite de l'Architecture et du Patrimoine. This is a space that opened in 2007 so it's totally new to us and, how lovely, we get introduced by Agnese, who also took us to the tea house at the Musselman Institute. I hope we'll have good images to share, since we plan to go tomorrow afternoon.

A Gallery walk

Yesterday, we went off to look at some galleries in our area. After seeing a lot of work that didn't interest us, we came across gallery baudoin lebon,
which has a show of current work by Joel- Peter Witkin, whom we heard at a lecture here last year. I will admit that I am , for the most part, turned off by his work. The content is, hmmm, how shall I say it...well, the word creepy, fits for me. But he's very good at what he does, and some of the new work appealed to me. Is he growing on me? We stopped in at the Centre Culturel Suisse , which had a show that was about the changes in Europe. And a stop at La Galerie d'Architecture, which now has a nice selection of books and magazines, though the exhibit was not all that interesting for us. (see fotos above)

As we neared "home," Chuck spotted a little bowl in the window of a tiny boutique named Paroxysme, at 1, rue Tiron. The proprietor, Karen, has contemporary ceramics and jewelry, all handmade in France. We had a nice chat and ended up getting a small porcelain bowl.





And what I have no image to share with you, because we ate them all, was a little bag of chocolate candy we purchased at Gildo, which is near Centre Pompidou. They were like "bridge mix" only way better.