Some Circles and Squares

 I made a few postcards for my groups on IUOMA  I originated two groups - one for Circles and one for Squares. The Circle one has a very active following but the squares, not so much.  I used the " let them fall" method of placement, then glued the bits wherever they fell. Then I gave them titles.

Direction, Congestion, & Gravity

                                                                 Direction & Gravity

They'll be sent off to in the mail this coming week. It feels good to spend a wintry morning making Mail Art. You should try it. Really. 

Mail Art, I hope

Well, my friends, I"m not sure how to get my photos onto this blog using my new Chrome book! Aaagh. I'll keep working on it.

Join me on CrestiveSprint.co in 4 days. It's a Global Art game and it's free and it's fun. I'm doing it, why don't you?

This is what I posted for MAM, Mail Art Monday. It was five days to the start of Creative Sprint. Get it. FIVE shapes!

An altered Mary Cassatt postcard. I love the depth created here. 

Tuesday Mail Art Plus

 This is Grace. When we were leaving the house this afternoon, we saw our neighbor with this dog. We asked if she'd gotten a dog but no, she'd just snagged this one who was alone, obviously lost, collar but no tags. We said we'd be back shortly and take the dog as the neighbor had to leave for work. When we got back, she was waiting for us.  Facebook and Craig's list had been posted to already. We exchanged phone numbers. I took this photo, put it on my Facebook page then went off on a walk about the neighborhood with the dog. I asked people, who were out, if they recognized the dog. I put up a couple of lost dog posters. The pup was happy in my yard and hanging out with us. Then I thought, oops, check Facebook, and sure enough - a message from the owner!  He said "I think you have my dog, Grace." I read that, turned to the dog and said "Grace, sit!" and she did. She was happy, all tail waggy, that we knew her name. There were 59 shares on Facebook - without Facebook, it would have taken a lot longer than 1 hour for Grace to be reunited with her humans. Hooray for social media. From now on, I think Grace will always be wearing her I.D. tags on her collar.

365.2 #192

Monday, I began this weeks series for my daily Mail Art. Two pieces a day.
I used Washi tape and circles for Monday. I flipped the circles, where they fell, I glued them.

365.2 #193

365.3 #43

365.3 #42

 Tuesday, I used squares and Washi tape, and flipped them, gluing where they landed.












I didn't move any of the circles or squares, but had to re-drop some that fell outside the boundaries (to state the obvious.)









For the text "fragile," "confidential," and "Priorité," I used my new rubber stamps.

Here's my treat to me, a Cavallini set of vintage postmarks and postal franks. I really like them. I can't wait to use the wavy lines on some of my faux postage stamps. Fun. And I re-discovered a couple of my fountain pens under a pile of stuff. They write nicely on my old topographic maps.

NOTE:  I read a column in my local newspaper by a man, who writes for the Dow Jones newswires, and he was saying that no one would miss the postal service if it was cut back to 3 days a week. I wrote him an e-mail (I did) saying I'd miss it as would many people that I know - Mail Artists and members of the Letter Writers Alliance, among others. I offered to send him some Mail Art if he'd send me a postal address. Well, guess what? Two days later, he e-mailed me his postal address! I sent him some mail art. Would you like to surprise him with mail? Let me know.

Mail Art and the storm!

 This is the scan on my old Epson scanner - which has just gotten very tired!

 I scanned this postcard on our HP printer/scanner that is new-ish. What a difference. Wow, I hadn't realized how tired the Epson was.

 This is Mail Art #85 (scanned on HP) I just made it and dedicate it to the impending storm frenzy. It's entitled  "Sandy waited patiently for her namesake storm, while all about her fretted."

Isn't this pretty? It's our Carillon in Byrd park. We were there on Wednesday night  with lots of other volunteers, for our assignments for the Rally for Obama on Thursday. The sky was beautiful, the flag lit up, the lights at the top, so dramatic.

And my little old-school phone still takes a good photo, right?

The storm is due to land on us on Tuesday. I'm off to the market, hopefully there is still some food and flashlight batteries left. People get so intense preparing for storms.

The weekend and lots of mail art

 This afternoon, we took a walk to drop mail in the box for early pick up tomorrow, and then walked over to our friends' to drop off stuff they'd left at our house. We stopped to chat with a neighbor who has a small garden in front of her house and she gave us some hot peppers. The orange ones are very hot, she warned. I gave one to John, one to our son, and kept one. That's about all the heat I'll need.

 At our friends' house. We were chatting, when I suddenly notice that there was a critter asleep on the couch in the kitchen. He didn't stir even though there were four of us talking. I think there'd been some Saturday night Halloween festivities.

 Our neighbor gave us this bottle of Glühwien made in Nurnburg.  He'd bought several bottles for our outdoor dance party that didn't happen on Saturday night. It was too cold to be outside and we had to cancel. Boo Hoo.  I can't wait to try this, as it'll bring back memories of Brussels, where we went late one November and got to see the holiday markets and light shows.

 This was the weekend for squares and circles. I decided to create designs based on my own 2D design course, which finished up last week.

 Saturday was all about squares.

 Check out how the circles change up the spatial quality depending on their value.

 I used my neighbors maths book for titles for these compositions.

 Here comes Sunday, all about circles.

 It's so interesting to me how simple placement changes the energy and direction that we follow.

 This composition was random. I dropped the circles on the paper and glued them where they landed.

This is another of the random compositions. They really work for me.
Which do you prefer, squares or circles? Why? This is not a test. ha ha ha

#68 and a Graphic Novel in 10 panels

 Today's letter of the alphabet for the 365 project is the letter "E" and since my younger sister's name starts with that letter, I'm sending this to her. 

As usual, I hadn't a clue what I'd do for today, but last night, while watching 2 more movies (The Oxford Murders and Toy Story 3) I cut out lots of letters of the alphabet to add to my little tin of letters.

 

Because I planned to submit to the Mail Art show in London having to do with Graphic Novels, I drew panels on 2 postcard blanks. After doing the submission to the show, I thought I'd just fill the panels with the letter "E." It worked.

This is the card for the Graphic Novel Mail art Show. If you have any interest in participating you can clik on the link for details about submission. The deadline is 11 March 2011, so there's plenty of time.  Some of my former design students might find this familiar.

This is my story in 10 panels. Can you think of a caption for it?

Black and white

Here are some images from the class that I taught last night at the VMFA studio school. It was such fun and the students, all adults, got into it quickly. They got some great results from their experimentation.