Mailart 365 has moved

Working through my postcard stash, I came across this and can't for the life of me work out how it got there. Usually at museums, I'll skip through most pottery, so there's no way I'd buy a postcard of a vase.

As it turns out, this isn't a vase, but is in fact a "pelike", which is a particular shape of drinking vessel, which was popular in Greece around the 5th century BC. Unlike the better known amphorae, which have pointed bottoms, the pelike has a flat bottom and can stand alone, which seems a rather obvious design if you ask me.

So, when I started this piece, I had no interest in Greek ceramic art, but the longer I sat studying the piece and drawing it, the more I came to appreciate how the skilled the sculptor was and by the end of it I felt that I could really appreciate pelikes.

As a postcard fanatic, I own far too many postcards that I'm "supposed to send" and often buy bundles of cards which often contain stuff that's just rubbish.

One aim of this project was to get through some of these and inject some life into these cards which nobody really wants to get.



This is one example of the sort of thing I mean. This card was part of a bundle and was from the now-defunct Athena chain. It's titled "Tracy Mills II", so I tried to google for who the person is, but could find nothing.

So obviously, this card would probably appeal to a grand total of nobody in the world. Hopefully, now with a little watercolour and fineliner enhancement, I hope that the new lease of life will make it a little more appealing to the 2 new recipients.

Today is the beginning of my 365 reboot and begins with this rework of a John Hindes Studio work, photographed by Edmund Nagele.



This new 365 project has been inspired by 365er Stripygoose, who we recently visited on Bird Migration day. Having completed all 365, Stripygoose invited Elenatgeezer, me and Positivelypostal over to her place and posted them all on one day in the same postbox, after which everyone present made a pact to do a full 365 all over again.

After some thought on themes, I decided to indulge my passion for postcard halfs, so I aim to make 365 pieces based on original postcards, where I cut them in half and do something creative with the other half. This pic is of somewhere in Cornwall and has been reworked in watercolour with Fineliner.

Obviously, as I am working with 2 sets of 2 halfs, then technically I'll be making 2 365s, but I didn't think that was fair, so will count both sides as a single piece, labelled a and b for simplicity.



As the blog posts come, I'll be expanding on the rationale behind the theme a little more, so watch this space.

The other half of the card, this piece shows the old number 10 bus coming down Oxford street and the new style coming in the opposite direction. There is a reason for this, and it's not a fault. I waited ages to get this shot as I needed a number 10 and a rear end shot of a bus, to show just how outdated the postcard (still on sale at the moment in shops) is.

Londons iconic Routemaster buses, known the world over for their open exits at the back of the bus, through which you can jump on and off any old time, were phased out some years ago and replaced with closed doors. This was hugely unpopular in some spheres (I loved the death gamble personally of running for a moving bus and jumping on with moving traffic behind me), and then, as if to add insult to injury, they introduced these European-style bendy buses, that were really long and had a bend in the middle. Now THOSE were deathtraps, and cyclists were caught under the wheels of those things all the time

Finally, London has decided to scrap this new breed of elongated deathtrap too, and are going back to something more like the Routemaster so I hear.

So perhaps what i've photographed is not a vision of the past and the present, but I've somehow opened a window into the future...

In 2009 I took part in a mailart project arranged on Twitter where I sent one piece a day to 30 people in total in a month. Bit like a small version of Mailart365 I guess. My theme was the halfcard, or postcard puzzle, that I designed.

The idea was to take an old postcard and replicate the exact photo in the present day. For the project I took a load of photos and some of the cards were inevitably spare, but I never got around to sending them.

This one was originally made then, but I had a spare print and card and I wanted to use it to make 2 new halfs, as I need to get myself in the mood to work on the rest of these. I have enough for a whole series, which will be coming shortly.