Melanie Reed from Seattle loves to produce hand-crafted media that reveals the three-dimensional process of its creation. Her excellent paper collages Meeting of Minds and Ship of State II reached me, while I was reading a book about Max Ernst who developed the three-dimensonal techniques grattage (scraping the surface layers of paint) and frottage (incorporating the structuresContinue reading “By Chance”
Category Archives: inbound
Colorfull Collages
Two wonderful collages from Seattle reached Vienna on the last day of March. They are works of Melanie Reed, titled New Year’s Eve and Object Lesson. Both images – Melanie calls them “unlikely art visions” – show a strong tension between a static central object and a background filled with colorful objects moving in a variety of directions.
Supplement to 2021
Sometimes things disappear on hard disks. Eventually, they turn up again. This happened to two works of Felipe Lamadrid which reached Austria in June 2021. They were scanned, they were prepared for publication – and then they somehow slipped into the wrong folder. They reappeared a few days ago, and therefore they can finally beContinue reading “Supplement to 2021”
A Mixed Lot from Italy
Bruno Cassaglia from Quiliano, a small town in the province Savona, sent a mixed lot of things. He included a text that proved rather enigmatic. It starts with the lines Quanti cieli oltre i cieli posso pensare?Quali altri universi impermiabili?Solo Dio lo sasolosolosolo mi sento solo Translated: How many skies beyond the skies can IContinue reading “A Mixed Lot from Italy”
Last Home
This large card is a work of Raphael Nadolny, who lives in the small Polish town of Mosina. The picture shows a catholic priest visiting a jewish cemetery in 1946. Nadolny calls the photocopy with colored gravestones an archeology of culture.
Dadaistic Card
The postcard from the French mail artist Zack leaves much space fore interpretations. E.g., the text on the right side says: 20h combattimento. La théorie du cygne noir. In English: 20:00 fighting. The theory of the black swan. Other crumbs of text refer to a young conductor and to the story of Tristan and IseultContinue reading “Dadaistic Card”
Night Sky
It was a very nice surprise to find a letter from Canada on my return to Vienna. Inside a found a drawing by Awyn in the mail . I looked at it and a poem by Paul Lawrence Dunbar (1872-1906) came into my mind. I only had a vague memory of the text, but whenContinue reading “Night Sky”
Delay…
Jay Block’s Collage reached Vienna some weeks ago, but it was only after my return from Crete that I found it.
Lots of Things
Jean-Philippe Gini from Belgium sent a bunch of small things, prints, readymades, stamps, and photocopies from mail art that he has collected. It all arrived in an envelope made from magazine pages, and it wasn’t all that easy to find the least destructive method to open it. But now it’s all here on the table.
Fascinating Cooperations
Sharon Silverman is an artist and an art instructor. She regularly combines forces with other visual artists to produce books that show art in conversation. In these volumes she responds to works of other artists, an approach that gives the reader / viewer the opportunity to understand her analysis of the works in a direct,Continue reading “Fascinating Cooperations”
Calligraphy from France
Richard Baudet from Marseille has been active as a mail artist for about 10 years. He sent this wonderful piece of calligraphy & more with stamps from the bureau philatelique. As he states, “this is mailart, not art by mail“ Merci bien!
No Headaches!
This is a very nice confirmation mail from CEPAG in Belgium. They are working on an exhibition with titled Words against system headaches / Words for new utopias. Update 12/2021: The exhibition has been delayed until 2022.
A Great Envelope
Thank you, Sylvia Dubois, for your art and for the fantastic envelope and the photos!
Music from Norway
Gunn Nordheim Morstøl sent a very nice letter and and a collage that includes a guitar player. I wish I still had hair that long and full…
From Russia With Stamps
Russia may as well be a synonym for poetry: Pushkin, Yesenin, Mayakovsky, Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Blok… Not all of them fall into the category great Russian soul. Vladimir Maykovsky, for instance, says in his epitaph for Sergei Esenin who commited suicide in the hotel Angleterre, writing his last poem with his own blood: “…maybe, if thereContinue reading “From Russia With Stamps”