Another week begins, I return to Tiny Town

#972

 I couldn't stay away forever. I'm going to be visiting Tiny Town again, as I find good images to add to it. This one is entitled - "When the BIG tourist season started up again, Tiny Town residents were startled by Eugenia's pale countenance."

#973

Ana in Paris sent me a wonderful piece of Mail Art and in the envelope she included a postcard of one of her art pieces that consisted of circles (or plates?) I couldn't resist, I placed my own circles on top of some of hers. I'm sending this altered piece back to her.

 Saturday, we went to Antique Village on Route 301, in quest of some magazines from 1962. While there, I came on this Fiestaware set. Lovely color. 

 This curious plaster statue attracted me. It's entitled "The Doctor!" Oh I should have gotten it. It could be him in another guise, right? Note the skull at the bottom.  We found magazines for our gift to friends having their 50th wedding anniversary, and I got materials to cut up for collages. We stayed at the place longer than planned as a HUGE rain storm hit the area. It sounded amazing on the metal roof of the building.

This morning, we went to the pool and it was an excellent idea to do that. The water was a perfectly nice temperature. As we were preparing to leave, C spotted something swimming back and forth by the steps on the opposite side. What the heck!! B grabbed a net, ran over there, and rescued a chipmunk. What a surprise for us, and for it!

Now to get back to preparing for a workshop. I'm going to be doing my first ever Mail Art workshop for children at BBGB, our Children's book store. What fun for me!

Some mail art +

Color

 Yesterday I was sooo ill.   I'm not sure if it was the extremely spicy Thai food I had on Saturday or a 24 hour GI bug. I stayed in bed most of the day feeling so weak and tired. However, late afternoon, I roused myself and went into my studio to produce #54. I just took a pile of colored paper that was sitting there and stuck it onto a black background. Voila! Looking at it today, I must say, it turned out really good. Sick or not, Mail Art must be made!

Sweet Travels

A friend called me yesterday while I was abed and I'm not sure I made much sense but I do remember her telling me that she's decided where she was going on her next trip. She was so excited about it. I made this card for her today though there isn't any piece of it related to her choice. It's just that traveling is so sweet!

 On Saturday, while at Antique Village, I saw this advertising display tucked into a big case full of glass bottles. Check out what it says. Amazing! A whole other way of thinking about smoking, folks.

This is a view of the glass display case. You can see the blue cigarette display tucked in there. Amazing, just amazing.  Do you remember how cigarettes were advertised in the past? Have you seen old adverts? Hard to believe.

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.

ol

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.

The Market on Monument.

Today is veggie pick up day at the market. My poor farmers didn't benefit from the rain storm the other day. They are feeling the drought. We had small pickings. There were onions, potatoes, melons, carrots, a few tomatoes, jalapeno peppers, and a few other items but not in huge quantities. Poor farmers!

Geraldine's space

An antiques market has been added to the Market on Monument, which is fun. We visited with several of our friends today. Geraldine of Ghostprint Gallery had paintings and other vintage items.

A peek at Maurice's stuff

Mimmy's vintage items

Mimmy's vintage jewelry

Maurice Beane had lots of interesting items to share in his area.  And another Antiques collector offered this fun range of seating.  Exile and Ouroboros were there today. Mimmy (the other Mim) and her mom, Sylvia, had a section with vintage jewelry and other items.  We managed to leave with only our veggies BUT we spotted a couple of things that we might just check out again.  If you're in Richmond, or nearby, this is a fun spot. They'll be there until October so I have plenty of chances to find some cool vintagy item, like those drinking glasses!

Los Angeles, busy days.

We took the DASH bus up into Hollywoodland (developed in the 1920s and where the name Hollywood came from) to have breakfast at the Village Cafe. The Antiques dealer, Alan, whom we met at the opening on Friday night, told us about this. What fun! The DASH cost only 25¢. Alan has this cute little antiques store on the corner up from our hotel. He gets things from movie and tv props and costumer people and sells them inexpensively. How cool! We went up to Griffith Park to see the observatory. Also, very cool. Here's a view looking down and one looking across to the famous sign. I had to take a photo of the water drain. A good reminder. Here, some of our drains remind us that the water goes right into the Chesapeake Bay.

Brocante

Saturday, a stroll to Village St. Paul (some little courtyard of shops nearby) to look at antiques. The weather was lovely, how lucky we've been.