Artist Trading Cards - random poetry (VisPo)

Went into my studio this morning and 

got the sudden urge to make 

some small poetry ATCs. 

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?

THURSDAY Time for catching up

 My older sister sent me a couple packages of books and included some other goodies, including an old pattern. Since I'll never make myself a tee-shirt, I am going to use the pattern in collages.

 Random text always adds a bit of intrigue for me. An incomplete story, a bit of conversation overheard in passing, the start of a dialogue, all of that and more.

I received a lovely collaged Mail Art piece from someone but they forgot to put a return address on it. To make up for that, the artist sent me a color copy of the original collage with her address - how could I resist re-cycling the copy.

Anyone guess where this figure came from? It's a famous painting.

Here's another figure from that famous painting.  I found an old, 1956, National Geographic Magazine. That made me happy as I had new things to cut out for collages. I'm getting bored with my scraps and needed new material. Does that happen to you? 

A couple of days ago, after the snow had melted, I spotted this tiny plant in my front garden. 

The sun is out today, though chilly.
Tomorrow, spring is predicted. How nice.

Altering my own Mail Art

365.2 #305

 The past three days, I was feeling thwarted by the old photo postcards so decided to just work quickly with what I had at hand. Colored paper and circles.

I made a series of simple color shapes.

I scanned and posted them and realized that I wasn't satisfied with them. Boring, just plain boring.

 Like the Landscape Beautification Project, I needed to do something with these, so I decided to "textify" them - in a move I called "Textification Project."

I found that this worked for me. These aren't my favorite collages, but they are better than before.

365.2 #155

365.2 #306

How nice that, in the case of collage, and Mail Art, I can change a piece, make it more to my liking.

365.3 #156 altered

Do you think the addition of the text improved the composition for you? What would you have done?

Sunday - Mail Art and more

 I really enjoy having coffee at the cafe at VMFA. It's mostly quiet there.

 I was looking down at my back garden, from our bedroom window. Looks like a dolls garden, with tiny furniture.

 The Azalea planted along the side of our house have bloomed. They look great this year.

365.2 #259

365.3 #109

These two card on cardboard substrate are done with just 3 bits. Some tear off of an old French receipt, a scrap from a paper sample book, and a punched out circle.








I really do find minimal compositions satisfying. You've read this before so this is not news to you, about my preferences.

365.2 #260

I'm going to get a kitten. Finally, the house has felt bereft of a pet since our dog died 2.5 year ago. We used to have cats, as well as dogs, so this isn't new for us, but it's been awhile.


I'm feeling very cat mood now. Our friend took in a stray cat, which happened to be pregnant. 5 kittens were born - and after awhile, hearing about them from our friends, talking about them with M, who's
been

365.3 #110

 encouraging me to do this, I decided to put my name on one of the kitties. "The calmest one," I told my friend.

I've chosen to name it "Neblina." It'll come to live with us after May 9th.

You'll see plenty of photos of it on this blog.

So what do you think the cats are saying?

365.2 #261

365.3 #111

#261 is going to Seville, Spain for a Mail Art call for blue mail art.











#111 is going to Sicily, Italy, for a Mail Art request for an exhibit and book in honor of Gerardo Sangiorgio, who was a poet and humanitarian. He resisted the Nazis in Italy, spent years in a prison camp, was freed and returned to Sicily. This is what I can make out with my poor knowledge of the Italian language. In any case, I'm pleased to honor him with this collage.

Lots of Mail Art to update!

 This one and the flowered one below contain some random text. I keep a small box with cut-out text from an old book. I think it was a romance novel that I found in someone's to-be-trashed box. I felt nothing bad about cutting it up!

 These two with paintings in them were prompted by my getting ready for my 2nd Slow Art Day. Looking at art, slowly.

For these next two pieces of Mail Art, I just looked into one of my scrap box and picked up pieces that were on top of each other. Really, it just happened that they looked like this and I liked the way they looked so I glued them down that way.

Simple, minimal, and for me, they just simply work.

Mail Art catch up part 1 and some clouds

#106

 The week leading up to our U.S. thanksgiving day, I played with some postcards from the water set. I altered them and added random text.

#107

#108

#109

 This is the card that I made specifically for thanksgiving. When I posted it on Facebook, the quote was about being grateful that thorns have roses. I like the way this one turned out very much. The smiling woman is so gorgeous and the rose so lovely. The background is a print and if you look closely you can see some hands in it.

This is the sunset last Friday night at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. On the Outer Banks aka OBX where we spent 3 very peaceful days.

Mail Art update, autumn colors

#101

#102

#103

 I began to post these to Facebook with quotes on different themes. I 'm not sure if the "likes" are for the image or the quote. I'm thinking - quote. This one had a quote from Dr. Seuss. I discovered that he has lots of good quotes available.

#104

#105

With this card,  I decided to return to altering cards from the box of them related to water. A box of 50 cards, with duplicates. Lucky me.  Large people walking in water is a fun theme for me.









I didn't particularly like the image on this card. It was two people with the same face lounging on the beach. A painting. I decided, after trying to find other faces, to just obscure the figures. I like the way this turned out. A floating rose and a seemingly transparent circle.







So here are two identical postcards. A painting by Milton Avery. I made #104, then turned it over - and oh no, I'd used the card upside down! But it works. It's fun.








Then today, I decided to use the card right side up and see what I could do with it. I used more of the images from the Victorian  illustration book, for the figures and animals.  They really do look like 2 different types of landscapes, right?

 It's autumn! Here's the little Japanese maple in from of our house.

Here's a view looking south-east on our street. I love the colors!