Mail Art and such.

 A card from my friend B Kapp in Chicago. She cheers me up with her dots and colors.

#121

I'm participating in the fall #Creativesprint. Every day we get a prompt. On day 12, we had to do something backwards. I wrote my grocery list backwards and used a mirror to check it. Not back after I slowed down and focused. Oh, yes, people, that's a life lesson right there!! Don't you think?

Day 14 #CreativeChallenge

 I participated in an Add to and return for the Ray Johnson project.

You can do this to, if you'd like.
Just print out the forms and do it.
Click HERE.

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?

Mail Art made on vacation!

 We went to Québec City for our vacation. I had hoped to find a Mail Artist there to have a meet-up with, but no such fortune. 

I did however make a lot of Mail Art while away. These pieces are a sample - I used scaps from found paper and added circles that I brought with me in my traveling Mail Art kit.






I altered commercial postcards and I made water color landscapes (not pleine aire, however.)

It was very relaxing to take a few moments each day and make little art pieces.








We were very inspired  by what we saw at museums and all around us, returning home with ideas for new work,

and memories of a terrific time in a new environment.


I had fun putting the bears into the postcard and am happy with how it turned out.

Mail Art, the mess, and, of coure, a little more.

365.3 #234

#235

#236

 This is the last of the water color pieces of Mail Art until I can find my water color paper. This is another attempt at doing an over head view of the shore line along the Chesapeake Bay.  I want to try more of these.







So yesterday, I had to go back to what was at hand, color paper. 4 colors.













For this one, I did the color pieces first. It was very minimal and I wanted more, so I added the circle on the right and the random letters & number. In the end, it makes me think of some kind of scientific equation or explanation.

This is the view of my hall and front room on Friday morning. The painters were starting to work on the rooms.

Here's the very front of the room. It looked like an art installation. This is still part of the water damage we had last June. But as of today, it's all taken care of, the work is complete.

Except for this - the boxes came back from storage and have to be emptied. Most of the stuff goes into my studio - and they're stacked up in it. See Bizoo inspecting the site? Wish he could help me clear out the boxes.






Here's Bizoo with a "friend." 

The shelves in my studio and the tv/guest room had to be painted, so we hired a terrific handy man, who helped us before. He's a musician, actually. He had his ukelele with him and played a bit for me. Wow, what a nice treat. Newly painted shelves and live music.

Mail Art, of course, and more NYC.

#56

 Here I use my current favorite elements, a person lower left looking off "camera", dots and Washi tape. What fun! The color of the large area is not gray, it's actually a green. My scanner didn't do a good job of capturing this.

#57

Here is one of my attempts at watercolor (colour, for my Brit friends.) I took a workshop yesterday, with my friend Rudi, who was very encouraging. I liked it. I have to practice a lot, but I think I can do this. It'll be a nice switch from my usual cut & paste.

#58

So what do I do today, day 58? I go back to cut and paste. I couldn't resist this. I've been looking for this fish, which got lost in my scraps, and just found it today. It went perfectly with this very old postcard. Since it called for a one cent stamp, it's gotta be from the turn of the last century.  

 Now for some food photos from our New York Trip. This delicious quiche was eaten a 103 Monument Lane in the West Village. YUM!

 On Sunday last week, we celebrated our daughter's birthday by walking around a lot! It was a gorgeous day for a walk. We went down to the parks on the Hudson  River, we went to restaurants, we checked out shops, and my honey followed some music and found an event in the courtyard of Westbeth. Great surprise. Good music, including the Bob Dorough trio. Bob did the music on Schoolhouse Rock. In case you don't remember it, check it out. He sang  "Three is a Magic Number" which was such a treat!
This little girl was busy creating art with a gigantic stick of chalk while the music was playing.

Here's some chill refreshment I had at lunch that special day. It was quite tasty! 

This is a creamy tomato soup that I had at Sarabeth's Tribeca restaurant. It was   near where we ended our walk along the Hudson River Park. When we saw the place, we decided to have an early dinner there. The recipe isn't posted on their site which is too bad cause I'd sure like to replicate it. I've never had such a delicious creamy, chunky tomato soup. Got a good tomato soup recipe for me? Anyone?

Friday - only 2 more weeks!

 The courtyard of the Swedish Cultural Institute yesterday. Too cold to sit outside, so we ended up having lunch at Le Tartine again. I really enjoy eating there as the waiter is quite friendly and jokes around. We had lunch with a couple who teach in the states, whom we met at the residents' reception on Wednesday. This is our first time meeting Americans since we're here. We had a nice lunch, then they went off to Bibliotheque Forney and we went back to look at the exhibit at the Institute. Since it's the 100th anniversary of the death of Auguste Strindberg, the exhibit was his life/work interpreted by several illustrators of B.D. (graphic novels.) It was really interesting, even if we couldn't read Swedish.

 The exhibits are always so interesting there. Besides the actual illustrations as in the books, there were these large cut-outs. I like how they did them flat and then the cross piece to make them stand up. Like I used to do when I was a child and would make cut-out dolls.

 After this exhibit, we went around to rue Thorigny to see several other galleries, here, here, and here. We saw work that we liked a lot, which was a nice change from the other day when we were unimpressed with work at another gallery. I the evening, we met up with friends at Lelia Mordoch Gallerie. We liked the work in show, got to see Lelia with her new son, drank nice champagne, spoke about art, and got to meet and speak (in Spanish) with an artist originally from Valencia, Spain. We had dinner afterwards with our friends, then, because we felt so full, decided to walk back to our place. It wasn't as bitter cold, we walked fast, and before we knew it, turned a corner and there was Notre Dame. Chuck said "I know where we are!" We were nearly back to our very warm atelier.

 Mail art using a show card as the base.

 This is a card that I picked up at Karsten Greve last week. I cut the card in half and made 2 pieces of mail art. You can see the complete card on the Karsten Greve gallery link. I added one new head and eyes. I wish I had another card like this so I could do one with new mouths.

Here are the little landscapes I've been working on. I'll have over 50 completed by the time we leave. When I get home, they'll be mounted on blocks of wood and sent off the the Art-o-Mat project.
I two weeks, at this time, I'll be in the airport, Charles de Gaulle, waiting for the boarding call. Hard to believe that this time has gone by so quickly. Now to get out there and appreciate the city. It's sunny!!(21F)

Mail Art outgoing, Tuesday

 It's early, for me. Since we've been here I've had trouble getting up, and getting to sleep, too. BUT I set the alarm and got up before 8 a.m. It's new sheets day so I have to strip the beds and take the sheets downstairs to get new ones.
And it's, also, my first French class at 10h30. yay. I'm doing better than I thought remembering vocab and getting tenses correct. Way better, which I attribute to my Spanish classes and meet-up. yay.

Here are the pieces of mail art that I made last night, while my honey was on the computer. We are learning to share one device.

 We walked by the tiny theatre: Point Virgule, and picked up some of their advertising post cards. They are perfect for altering. We can't attend any performances  there as they're usually comedy pieces and all in French, bien sur.

 I used water color pencils for this landscpe, and some graphite. I'll be interested in seeing where I end up with these imaginary landscapes. I've already done two sheets of four each for the art-o-mat project. This one is standard postcard size.

 On our walk last night, I spotted this spotty shoe. Love it. Actually, I'm crazy about lots of the shoes in this town. I can't wear high heels anymore, oh I could, but my feet would yell at me, but I can imagine them on my feet.

I taped one of my friend Katerina's envelopes to the wall by the door of the studio so I'd remember to take the mail to the post box. They've removed the one in front of the Cite so I have to carry these a bit further.  I'm going to start to take photos of the Post Offices that I go to, hoping that it's not a security thingy and get questioned.

The street lights have been turned off, the sky is getting brighter, morning begins.

Playing with water colors +

 I've been playing around with water color, as I mentioned in yesterday's post. Not sure what I'm doing with it but today, the weather was spring-like, so,  I was inspired to do something with a feeling of happy, growing, energy flowing kind of mail art. I stuck on some gold foil circles. I don't know how they'll make it through the postal machinery. The cards may arrive sans the gold. It's kind of an official looking touch, right?

 Oh happy mail box. I got some lovely mail art yesterday, from Brazil, the U.S. and Germany.

 We drove by this house today, and my honey stopped to let me grab a photo with my phone. I must go by when it's dark to see this lit up. There's the santa from the Nightmare movie, a santa in a cage with vultures on top of it, a witch, a snowman or two, and more. What a silly scene. Someone was having fun!

When my honey was cutting up the box that my suitcase came in, so it'd fit into the recycling bin, this dropped out. An earring! I wrote to the company and showed them and said I'd send it back. I got an e-mail this morning, saying that I could discard it as the person who owned the pair had thrown out the match. oh well. I think I'll hang it on some display Christmas tree instead. It's ornamental
and will be a surprise for someone.

Friday, already!?

 This is a detail of a watercolor by my friend who died last Dec. Her birthday would have been celebrated last Friday. I think of her almost every day.  I have incorporated part of this in one of my tattoos, so she's with me all the time.

This card was done for yesterday's daily mail art.
It was day #324. I decided to use 4 things
out of a little storage drawer filled with bits.

















This card is day #325's card and I decided to stick with the same drawer of bits, again using only 4 things.  Having a lot of bits already cut out, and a lot of odds and ends, is very helpful to making mail art every single day. It doesn't take very long, though I think that years of teaching basic design comes into play, well, for sure they do. And keeping in mind, simplicity, and not thinking about having to be perfect. Some really wonderful, fun things a have come out of this year's play. I can't believe it's almost over. 

I buy a lot of postage stamps from the USPS, but every once in awhile, I buy some unused, of course, vintage stamps. I don't ask for anything specific, loving the surprise of what's in the envelope. Check out this one! Can you imagine this getting "published" in our current political climate! Okay, postage historians out there, what year was this?