Mailart 365 has moved

I love salad! This is a world of salad from my garden and an idea I am playing with.

Marianne North was a Victorian artist who traveled the world painting and collecting plants.  If you visit Kew you can see her paintings.  It seems to me that she made the world a garden,  and that might fit with mailart makes the world a town?

Trying to find a way into the zine so did a bit of everything to try to unblock...

My duahgter has been cleaning out her room and I keep going through the rubbish just in case there is something I NEED.  I loved the view of this oxford college info (circle view) and wondered if it might inspire something for the 'mailart makes the world a town' zine. It hasn't but it made me wonder about you all and your worlds...

We took family to Orford Castle - a revisit x 4 or so so Figgy and I opted out of the audio guide.  We collaborated on this postcard of Orford castle (other side).

This one if for any dyslexic mailartists... 'Oh you greedy horse' was a dyslexic trick to learning those problematic words so when I was looking at borough keys I thought why not make mailart that is helpful for dyslexic postmen or mail artists?

I am always teased about thinking everything is treasure.  when we went to Orford castle I decided not to listen to the audio guide but to draw things that interested me... very quickly. I was drawn to the display cupboards, briefly and thought how some 11C weights were certianly treasure.

Here are four CDs that went out this week, two for my DC CD series (top left and bottom right) that are decorated with Smithsonian museum images and pastels, one for a swap (bottom left) full of guilty pleasure songs and songs I can no longer stand for some emotional reason but can't seem to delete anyway.... And the top right CD was made for my newest friend Mary who randomly found me the other day and now we are in love. ;)

These are the first I've made since last hand-drawing my mix artwork and I think I much prefer that, so hopefully the mix CDs that go out in the future will be more interesting to look at! In the mean time-- still learning. :)

xo June

 Before I started reducing my swaps, I joined a couple swaps on Swap Bot that dealt with 80s/90s cartoons and ATCs inspired by them. I have decided to leave that series because I'm getting more into zine-making and don't want to spend so many hours a week making ATCs anymore... but first, I sent off one for Thundercats and another for Jem. :)

Neither were shows I was particularly excited about when I was younger, but I still took the time to hand-draw the cards and decorate the envelopes to match. :)

The Jem envelope is probably my favorite of the two... I'll probably invest some time in sculpting another face decorated envelope in the future. Seems like a  pretty neat thing to receive in the mail!

I love all of the opportunity Swap Bot gives me to decorate envelopes ! I'll mostly just be joining mail art specific swaps for the time being so I look forward to sharing what I come up with here!

xo June

Not my family, thankfully! :)

Wasn't too happy with the way this was shaping up as a watercolour piece, which I started before 198. It was a mess and I tried to recover it in the morning with fineliner but it was still a mess. Usually a mess isn't such a bad thing, but as this was a Sharpie packet I felt bad about it. I guess the fact that they are paying for it changes how I feel about what I draw on there. Iknow for sure that I definitely draw differently for paying customers

I'm currently taking part in a postal project in the centre of London called welovereal. They give me a "plot" and I need to fill it by sending post in. My first piece of post has to be a profile, for which the organisers have sent a preformatted profile page requesting a name, location and bio.

I've decided that my plot will be a pretty thorough history of my REAL wall, so I wanted to get off on the right foot with the profile, giving the audience not just the information requested, but a neat biographic preview of what is to come over the month.

Facebooks timeline format suited this idea and approach perfectly, but I did have to totally ignore the layout provided.

It was such a lovely trip back down memory lane to dig out these major events, and the whole thing took just over 4 hours to complete

I've been given a public space to display mailart at a new mail project that's opened in the very centre of London. The project is called Welcome to Real, and bills itself as the first network to be run by post. Regular readers of my REAL wall may have a little something to say about that...

Anyway, the idea of this project, sponsored by Royal Mail, is that they have a public display space in a pretty prominent place in the centre of London and they are giving a number of lucky folk "plots", which are little pieces of space to display stuff that is to be sent in by post. I've been given plot 45 to display in and I shall be running my REAL wall at that address until the end of the show, which runs til the 27th July.



I shall be doing a retrospective/live performance of my REAL wall, showing all the awesome stuff I've been sent over the years. You of course can take part and fill up my plot too mailartists and readers, just send all your mailart to me this month at my plot address, which is...

my REAL wall, Plot 45, REAL, The Royal Opera Arcade Gallery, 1-2 Royal Opera Arcade, London, SW1Y 4UY, UK

As part of my welcome package, the organisers have sent me a whole heap of pre-paid envelopes, which is rather nice. Me and Camel were wondering if the postage would also be paid for if it came from America. I don't reckon it will be, but it's gotta be worth a go.

Not sure if this will make it through the post to the Island Mailart exhibition but I have to try! On Cranberry island we have an outdoor shower.  It overlooks some woods, not the mountains and there are various insects.

For Mim's mum, a vision of an exotic island. The flower was made from a series of photos in a morning newspaper of a woman in a dress who was caught in the rain and wind at Ascot.

I tend to draw my pieces in about half an hour before work. I find the pressure is good for forcing me to get stuff done. This one was coloured in Sharpie and Letraset promarker metallic for the blues and golds. The exagerated perspective was hard to get my head around

100 More to go 1st post was on June 27th 2011. I will not complete 100 more cards by Wednesday. :)

Via Flickr:
sent to darcilena in usa
made for the free themed postcard swap
tried the use of napkins in the collage elements more

Via Flickr:
sent to else in NL
private swap, sent some small pieces of fabric for her crafts

Via Flickr:
sent to linda in usa
envelope that contained the inspired by postage stamps ATC swap

Via Flickr:
sent to jennifer in belgium
envelope that contained the inspired by postage stamps ATC swap