Mail Art, Little Free Library, and more

#98

#99

 I made this Mail Art to send to someone who sent me a lovely piece of Mail Art back in March and I've been sooo remiss in responding to people. I feel awful about it. Slowly I'm getting mail out. Oh everyone who sent me Mail Art, please know that I loved getting it.




I made this altered card using a postcard that we got at our most recent visit to the National Postal Museum on my birthday last week. I added the colorful old postage stamps to it. It's going to my niece and nephew in Wisconsin. They'll get a kick out of getting real mail.

#100

I've been having fun punching out circles from old Art magazines. I'm preparing for a workshop that I'm going to do in two weeks, and I'm going to offer up a tin full of these circles as part of the project. More on this after it happens.



My workshop last week went really well. It was on Artist Trading Cards. Super fun to share. The participants were all teachers, grades kinder through end of high school, all different subject areas. 

#101

So these two cards are the start of some fun for me, as I plan to make use of the circles, also.  I like circles a lot, and these are so planetary, and minimal.

 I'd seen this Little Free Library a few weeks ago when driving by the Richmond Ambulance Authority building. How cute, I thought, and today, with a book to deposit, I stopped there on the way home from playing with my grand-girl.






This is beautifully crafted and painted to look exactly like the ambulances.  It had a nice amount of books in it, not crowded like some of the other smaller LFLs. I hope that more people pay attention to it.

Do you have any LFLs in your neighborhood?

 My niece and her husband joined us to celebrate the American Independence day, 4th of July. She brought head bands for all of us to wear. Here she is modeling one. Cute, aren't they?

 Bizoo waits on my bedside table every morning waiting for me to wake up. He taps my head sometimes, and other times just sits patiently. The treats are in the top drawer!!
He knows it, as does our grand-girl, who likes giving the cat treats. We did, however, find her munching on a few herself, yesterday.

I just had to share these flowers with you. They were among the bunches at Amy's farmers' market stand last week. Gorgeous, like a painting, yes?

Mail Art, a question, and some other stuff

Bizoo

Z

 Bizoo was in C's studio lying on some tissue paper. This was acceptable as he wasn't tip-toeing over the art work, supplies or tools that are everywhere.

Z's cute face captured on a recent walk with her Pa & C. The hat was made by Great-Aunt Phyllis. Happily she likes hats since it's been really chilly here.

#315

This is a view of the wall in the studio in Paris, showing all of the altered Mona Lisa cards that I made back in the winter of 2012. I still have these cards. What to do with them? Hmmm. I was going to scan and post, then mail out, but do you think I should try to find a little venue to display them first?
I need some input on this.

The little Victorian children are on an OLD French postcard showing Mont St-Michel. They love the miniature sheep!

#316

This was made after I returned from Washington DC and my visit to the National Postal Museum. That's an old Metro card, a photo of Owney, the postal dog, and some other images related to the P.O.

#317

This is a memory piece using some paper from one of my grade books and some torn bits of art work. I discarded two grade books that I had from 2002 & 2003. I looked at all the students names to see how many I remembered and hoped that they were all doing well. Then shred shred shred, gone!

#318

Some more Victorian scraps. I cut up a bunch while watching TV one night. We usually don't watch much but have a couple of series we follow. I can't just watch TV.

#310

And here's a cat that reminds me of Bizoo, waiting on a vintage postcard bridge.

And some related to vintage postcards news: I'm one of three jurors at the Od Dominion Postcard Club show tomorrow. Bad part, I have to be at the venue at 0830, and it's not close-by. More on this next post.

National Postal Museum, Mail Art, and more

 On Sunday, I took the train up to Washington, DC, a lovely 2.5 hour ride during which I got to visit with some friends heading to NYC.

I was going there to meet up with some Mail friends. One I'd met before but not the other two. This was very exciting to me. I'd "known" these people for many years through correspondence.

One is PostMuse, the other is Missive Maven, and the other is my friend Juli.

We met at Union Station, had lunch, then headed over to the National Postal Museum. The new Stamp gallery is AMAZING! We were, of course, like kids in a candy shop!

PostMuse had all of her fabulous pens with her and Juli got to try out quite a few and I came away thinking that I needed to increase my collection of pens. Neither Missive Maven or I carry our pens with us. I'm always afraid that I'll lose one of my favorites. Do you have a favorite pen? Do you carry it with you?

We got to take home stamps from a whole bunch that were on a table just waiting for us to play with, as you can see above. We were even provided with cool envelopes to take them home in.

There were lots of postcards for us to take home as souvenirs and we did! Like I need more postcards, right? Here's what I took home. You'll see these in the coming days, altered, as Mail Art.

Later in the day, Melissa of Craftgasm met up with us. I'd met in her NYC several years ago at a huge craft fair. She now has a shop: ANALOG, stop in if you're nearby. It's full of vintage goodies and mail related items. 

#311

Now to Mail Art -  I've decided to add Victorian scraps to commercial postcards again. I love that a new narrative is created with the addition of one item.

#312

#313

#314

This card was created while at the National Postal Museum using stamps provided there. I was at Mecca, as Juli noted when posting on fb.

Here's Bizoo interrupting my work the other day. He now covers my entire keyboard. I should put up a comparison photo from a few months ago. This cat is HUGE!

  I was quite delighted to come up on this bicycle and it's sweet shadow.



What more can I say about my trip to D.C. except that is was like a wonderful dream, to get to spend time face-to-face with people I've corresponded with for years. I felt like I was with old friends, and I was. 

End of the week!

 This is one of the pieces of mail art that I took with me on Monday to mail from the Postal Museum. I was playing around with oil sticks. I don't know that this ever dried properly and I hope it made it through the system without gumming up the machine.

 The National Postal Museum. What a treat to see it again.

 This is one of many views of the Jefferson Monument with Cherry Blossoms around it. The sun had finally appeared from behind the clouds and briefly lit up the dome.

 Juli took this photo of me, deep at work on the display table, making mail art.

 It was a very busy week between the D.C. visit and today. Among other things, on Tuesday we went to VMFA with friends for lunch,  and to look at the statues of The Mourners again. So beautiful.  

This morning, I walked to the Science Museum for Spanish Meet-up and on the way back took photos of flowers. Everything is in bloom, or about to bloom. Do you know what this plant is? I don't. It's a bush. The flowers are so pretty.

 This iris is growing against my neighbors fence. Childhood memories are full of irises, because I'd take them from neighborhood yards and bring them home to my mother, to her delight and chagrin. I knew she loved that flower, but she disliked me taking them from the neighbors yards.

Some brilliantly colored tulips.

 I haven't made much mail art this week, as I've piled my table full of papers, including goodies from the Postal Museum. (my excuse, weak as it is, cause you know I make M.A. anywhere.) This weekend, I'll neaten things up and get busy. 

I have continued, however, with my daily piano practice. 

D.C. day & Slow Art Day

 I went up to D.C. on the train yesterday to meet my PenPal Juli. She took some terrific photos while we were at the National Postal Museum.

Here I am stamping the commemorative cancellation on postcards for the exhibit about the Hindenburg and the Titanic. We loved being able to use that stamper.

 Here I am, making mail art on a display table. It was just the right height and was there for people to put post-it notes with their thoughts on the museum and the postal system. I had my mini-mail art kit with me.

 Me, attempting to take a photo of Owney, the postal dog. The glass had such glare on it but Juli managed to get me and Owney together.

I'll post some photos of the Cherry Blossoms. We had a wonderful walk amongst the trees, in the afternoon.

A reminder to anyone in my area. I'm hosting Slow Art Day at my fabulous Virginia Museum of Fine Art.
Isn't this portrait beautiful? What a composition with that skirt taking up the bottom of the painting. I'm thinking that I'll focus on portraits but haven't made the list of art work yet. Here's a link to sign up to join me that day. SLOW ART at VMFA

Mail boxes, tiny art, and something new

 I took a few photos of mail boxes while at the National Postal Museum in Washington, D.C. on Sunday. I'm still in a state of happy from visiting that museum. This is a small mail box that I remember from my childhood. You could only put regular letters into it as anything bigger wouldn't fit into the opening. A problem with that design.

 Here are a few of the examples  of Post Boxes from other countries that were on display. Have you seen any of these in person? What countries are they from?

 Today, we went back to the Think Small show at ArtSpace. The work was to be no bigger than 3" (7cm) in any one direction. The wall piece is by a friend of ours. There are lots and lots of tiny artworks on display.

 There were many pieces that we liked a lot and wanted to own. If you're in the RVA area, check it out before it goes down on 18 Dec. 
Update on the local Art-o-Mat: my piece, my honey's piece, and my son's piece, have all sold out. YAY!

Something new!! I got myself a Kindle in preparation for my two months in Paris.  I've purchased 3 books so far - IQ84, Reamde, and The Night Circus; and I've loaded on some classics, which are free. Want to know what they are? Take a guess and let me know what you think I chose.

More D.C. memories

 This was the decoration on the gates leading to the main Smithsonian building, the Castle.

 The weather was so nice, perfect for walking around D.C. I love how yellow this tree is and that's the Smithsonian Castle building.

 This is a painting by Gerhard Richter. The illusion is so fabulous. We'd walk close up and back again, just to admire how good this was.

 I finally made it to the Postal Museum!

 This is Owney, the postal dog, really, it's the real dog, taxidermied since forever! He's got on his "jacket" and collar full of tags showing all the places he'd been.

 These hand carved stamps were used to cancel the postage stamps. Postal workers would make their own out of corks.

 This is a small postage stamp, an engraving, considered to be a very beautiful stamp in it's day. (Size, about 1" x 1/2")

Here's another sky photo that I took from the car window as we headed home. The beautiful weekend ended with a beautiful sky.