Tag Archives: mail art

journaling + mail art, stuff i've made

Object Enclosed: one (1) pc. “Ear”

fat ear

Paintings are not going too well. Reached a point yesterday when I thought I would explode…some unnameable despair filling me up, making everything I do hateful and wholly despicable.

Finally I squeezed noodles of paint over the problem canvas, and spread the quinacridone magenta around wildly with my hands, obliterating everything I’d done so far…I cried a little, but the rage subsided, and I felt heaps better for having done it. A feeling of calm filled me, but I also felt tired.

To take a break from all this pathetic, anguished (only happens in movies, surely?) painting, I set about making some mail art  for a friend who is also a painter (probably a less angry painter than I am, but who knows, really, what lurks in the hearts of women who paint?) and I started the epistle with this hilarious first page. I should have attached a small magnet to the stapled ear, so that it could be used as a fridge magnet…what a fun idea! Oh well, maybe next time (there’s always the other ear). ;)

I quite like how I’ve managed to bring the two options together harmoniously by “cutting the painting’s ear off”.

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blogs and sites, embroidery and textiles, Inspirations, made with paper, stuff i've made

The self-sufficient love letter…

lovegramme print Collage

“For love is sufficient unto love.” —Kahlil Gibran

And the Self-sufficient Love Letter is sufficient unto the Post Office…

Finally finished this for my friend Kat Tan-Conte, graphic designer, artist, all-around superhuman and the voice behind the blog Zero The One.

I photographed the pieces of red stitching on paper, straightened them up a bit, and then cut and pasted them into place in Gimp. A little bit of cleaning up—I don’t know how to do it properly, it’s very, very rough!—and then had the file printed in color to see what it would look like.

Anyway, the idea is to write your letter of Love (or other Demons) on the blank side, and then fold the sheet along certain lines so that the letter becomes its own envelope. Affixing the postage stamp (none of your soulless postage meter impressions, go and buy an amazing stamp!) to the letter also seals it. Voila! A non-Post-Office approved aerogramme that saves on paper. Love, and nothing but love—red, curly, er, cloyingly ornate—in the mail. ;D

No idea when Kat will release the zine in which you can find the template for the SSLL, but as soon as it’s out I will be sure to let you know!

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embroidery and textiles

The day ends in “Fiery Frustration”

matchbox art

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.

—Kurt Vonnegut

fiery frustration: a fabric postcard

Just about ready to hurl my Singer overlocker into the harbor. Spent most of yesterday trying to figure out what was wrong with it…it’s been in storage for 2 years, and pretty much brand new, I hardly used it when I bought it. Now this big fat curtain job has come along, and I desperately need to overlock the pieces because it’s such heavy fabric that hemming would increase the bulk ridiculously.

I opened it up, cleaned and greased all the parts, threaded it…started the generator (bit tricky, you wrap a cable around the flywheel and pull as hard as you can)…tried it, no go…re-threaded it…found that the upper looper piston had seized…un-seized it…threaded it again…started the generator, tried it…not making chain stitches…re-threaded it…cleaned it again…finally got it all spinning and pumping…started the generator…then that accursed, un-seized upper looper swings up just as nice as you please, and snaps both needles into several small pieces and throws the needle plate out of whack.

It was night by this time. I was fuming and near to tears. A whole day gone, and nothing working. Desperate to get something right, I fired up the generator one last time, hauled out my regular sewing machine, and in a swirl of fabric scraps, paper bits and some ribbon, I made a long-overdue fabric postcard for Sharon McGrath. Sharon sent me a beautiful fabric postcard last May, and it was high time I made her one in reply.

I’ve been putting off making this postcard for a month, waiting for that perfect concord of peace, cheer, and stitchiness to strike me…and here all it took was the pent-up murderous energy, some rage against a machine, and the mule’s obstinacy to do something creative before the day was out.

It’s called “Fiery Frustration” and it was glee to sew. It improved my mood compeletely…I loved the colors, the random patches of fabric I tore and stitched down. I loved that I could go to my To Do list that evening and ‘X’ off an item that had been nagging at my conscience for a while.

Comin’ at ya, Shazz! Ahhh….X marks the spot.

fiery frustration: a fabric postcard

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Mail art on the first of May

We hadn’t paid a visit to our post office box for a few weeks, so I had a real surprise today upon finding, among the invitations to exhibit openings and the bank statements, three beautiful pieces of mail art in it.

Jenni wrote me a long letter about art, language, and her new home in Langkawi, Malaysia. She filled the margins with, and added cut-outs of, her bright drawings: hot-house lilies in brilliant tropical colours, tendrils and curly swashes on her letters.

Shazz sent me a richly embellished fabric postcard. Layers of color and texture play in Shazz’s work, leading the eye around to marvel at little details of stitch or pattern.I savour the way the postage stamp she used—a large stamp featuring Lake Eyre during The Dry—is echoed by the thread play of the fabric card, itself…shades of silvery sand and blue sky veined with clouds, softened by shimmery iridescent threads that look like the heat rising off a desert.

Shazz also sent me an artist’s trading card called Fire…a layer of sandy fabric, cut away to reveal a vivid, intense welt of red fabric underneath, emphasized by bold black machine-stitching, was inspired by the Victoria Bush Fires.

Thanking you both, Jenni and Shazz! It is so nice having creative, talented friends who take the time to send you lovely handmade letters and works of art from all over the world, through the post! I love all three creations intensely (will send e-mails soon!)

Now I have to get offline and get started making my replies! That reminds me, it’s time for another postcard to Jason Moss…

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