Mail Art, of course, and some snow news.

#25-2015

#26-2015

Snow is coming

#32

 What an assortment of Mail Art -1) altered a card that I made from a print of my Artist Coloring Book collage, 2)used some circles, 3)altered a commercial card from our trip to NOLA - landscape beautification project, 4) made a batch of "snow is coming" cards. In between, I made some other numbers of cards. It's been fun.

The snow started yesterday about 2 pm. It was fine and continuous and stuck to the ground. I took this through the window in the kitchen (see the screen?)


It kept coming, and coming, and coming, so fine and so quiet.









This morning, the bird bath shows how much snow fell in our back yard.

See how the snow rounds things out? Softens the edges.

It's sunny now, but very cold, and, oh my, it's going to get colder.

Our city shuts down, meanwhile, in Chicago, where there's lots of snow and is as cold as it is here, my friend goes out and about with her life.

Me, I'm a shut-in - who'll catch up on responding to mail and knitting and hoping there'll be mail delivery.

What's weather like where you are?

My #70s and something scary!

 Whew, I finished working on getting all the receipts tallied in preparation for our taxes being done. The annual, oh my, did I save every receipt from the previous year? Done. Now to hand it all to the actual tax document preparer.

That done, I went up to my studio to complete today's Mail Art, the letter "G."

 I had made several of these little 10 panel formats when I was working out the piece for the Graphic Novel Mail Art show. I had this one left and rather than fill it with "Gs", which I actually only had 3 of, I decided to go with the color green.

But then I decided to do something minimal, since I'm now a member of the minimal Mail Art group on IUOMA. It's an encouragement for me to use less.

Here's the scary thing. I captured this image the first night we were in New Orleans. Its in the garden behind the big cathedral.  We were walking along and looked up and didn't see the statue, just the shadow. aaaagh! Has this every happened to you, where you saw a shadow and not the thing that created it?

#65s and some New Orleans

B is for El Badolon

 Today's cards had to do with the letter "B" for our MailArt365 project. I found that I had a deck of miniature lotto cards in espanol.

B is for Barril

I was still feeling the thrill of sewing paper to paper that I had to use stitching rather than adhesive to attache these cards to the map background.

B is for El Borracho

I used one of my old state of Texas maps since I thought espanol would work with Texas. I hope that Houstonians aren't offended by El Borracho! Nothing intended by it since I have never been to Houston.

 In New Orleans we went to many galleries both in the French Quarter and the Warehouse district (Julia St.) A wonderful surprise was to find that Chris Roberts-Antineau has a gallery on Royal St. I've loved her work ever since I saw it at the Smithsonian craft show in Washington, DC many years ago. It's applique and embroidery. Very complex and very beautiful. Check her out.

 This is the wood oven pizza we had at Louisiana Pizza Kitchen our last night in New Orleans. It was sooo good and the Caesar salad had the best dressing on it.


Our server was Kate, from Australia. She was very lively and friendly. We found everyone so friendly and talkative, and happy that we were there. How cool is that!?



If you go to New Orleans, don't miss this little gem of a restaurant. Really, one day, go without cajun food, and get a pizza here.

#64s & more

"A new place"

"A-nother new place"

Roasted veggies

 Today is the second day of the alphabet challenge, the letter "A." I decided to do whatever I wanted and fit in the letter, but then it appeared that I created a new place so the "A" worked for that. Sewn pieces of paper to a topo map which was then glued onto a piece of cardboard from a cracker/biscuit box.

Sultan's Nest

The colorful maps are from a map of London that my friend Andrea sent to me. This card has a tiny A on the map already so that worked for the alphabet project.









I promised some photos of food from our New Orleans trip. Here's what I ate at The Green Goddess restaurant on Exchange Alley. It's a tiny place, no reservations, the chef comes out to chat with the patrons, the cooking goes on right near you in a teeny, tiny space, and the whole place smells of delicious cooking.





The dessert is pistachio ice cream, topped with a nest of philo dough, some whipped cream and some honey sauce. Yum!! We shared this one.

#63s and more

"Now! Revised!'

"New! New!"

 I used the same process for the #63s. I glued down strips of map (mainly Virginia) to create a new, revised version of the landscape.

Today was the first day of a month long alphabet project on Mail Art 365. The first day we were to use an exclamation mark. So I did.





The "New! New!" card cracks me up. The advertisement is from Photography magazine (8 pages in full color) from November of 1949. I got it at Whitings' Paper. Pretty interesting sales pitch.

Here's one of the many photos that I took in New Orleans. I'll do a few posts about my trip soon. This shows how clear the skies were and the typical iron railing. This is an interetsing building. It doesn't look either French or Spanish, which are the architectural influences there.  It looked sort of Eastlake.

Wait until I show you some of the food!
(exclamation point used)

Mail Art while on my holiday!

First card made in New Orleans

2nd card made in New Orleans

 I prepared for my trip by getting cards ready. I put all the rubber stamps, addresses and postage stamps on the address side and on the art side, I put a piece of torn colored paper in the center. This way  the cards would have some continuity as a series. I couldn't take a scissor as we took our luggage on board rather than checking it. I'd packed a small metal ruler to tear against, which worked fine.

3rd card made in New Orleans

4th card made in New Orleans

Last card made on trip in airport at Atlanta

I collected a few brochures from the hotel lobby to work with. This second card I made while having coffee in the cafe of the Contemporary Art Center. The CAC was closed to the public but happily the cafe was not. In the cafe, is an ART-O-MAT!! and guess what? My work is in THAT machine. I was doing the happy dance, for real.





The white "O" on the blue background is the little label we got when we paid admissions to the Ogden Museum. This museum had some pretty terrific work in it and a surprising exhibit of huge pottery, which I'll blog about later. Huge!









This card has a bit of scrap showing Blue Dog. The Blue Dog gallery is in the French Quarter. We don't "get" Blue Dog but he's very popular and well known.










My last card made while away, was created while waiting for the connecting flight from Atlanta to Richmond. We'd had to leave our hotel at 8h00 so I didn't get to work on a card in New Orleans. Then our flight from Atlanta to home was cancelled and we were rebooked on a later flight, so I had plenty-o-time to play. I wasn't too bad working on my lap. I had my little envelope of scraps and my glue stick and metal ruler. I, also, had a little plastic box with the numbers in it.

All in all, I was pretty pleased by being able to make these cards while on holiday. It preparing me for our longer trip in the spring.  Photographing the cards worked out okay, too.  They came out pretty crisp, though I will admit that I took several of each card at different settings.