Mail Art Makes the World a Town Assembly Book

Mail Art Makes the World a Town Assembling Book

Edition updates as at today - I have managed to catch up on some admin!  Cover and cut-ups for whichever version is full first.  For those wanting to participate, please send 27 signed and numbered double-sided pages for editions 13/14.  Edition 14 submissions MUST have hand-done elements in order to qualify for inclusion.  At Edition 15 the format will change to postcard size (A6) - 22 signed and numbered pages.

Edition 13

•   Serse Luigetti - Italy

•   Tiziana Baracchi - Italy

•   Vittore Baroni - Italy

•   Jürgen Olbrich - Germany

•   TICTAC - Germany

•   Katerina Nicoltsou - Greece

•   Claudio Romeo - Italy

•   Erich Sundermann - Austria

•   TICTAC - Germany

•   Hans Hess - Germany

•   Svenja Wahl - Germany

•   Antonio Gomez - Spain

•   Rod Summers - Netherlands

•   Karl Steuer - Switzerland

HANDMADE - Edition 14

•   Erich Sundermann - Austria

•   John M Bennett - USA

•   Anna Banana - Canada

•   Jürgen Olbrich - Germany

•   Vittore Baroni - Italy

•   Meral Agar - Turkey

•   TICTAC - Germany

•   Miguel Jimenez - Spain

•   Carl Baker - Canada

•   Tiziana Baracchi - Italy

•   Hans Hess - Germany

•   JF Chapelle - France

POSTCARDS - Edition 15 - please note change in format to postcard size (A6)

•   Jürgen Olbrich - Germany

•   Torill Elizabeth Larsen - Norway

•   TICTAC - Germany

•   Tiziana Baracchi - Italy

•   Karen Alekyan - Armenia

Earthly. Marie Wintzer (Japan)/Cheryl Penn (South Africa) An Encyclopedia of Everything - The Expanded Version.

Earthly

Marie Wintzer and I have collaborated before (and continue to) in a series titled Books of Ether.  

Marie posted me the photographs which she had printed mid-March, and although this project is part of the digital realm, I have also made them into an artifact - I cant touch, page through, remember as well, when scrolling down a glass screen.  Together we published various photos on our blogs, but the e-book was published by Marie on 22 January 2015 on scribd - see

https://www.scribd.com/doc/253274958/Earthly

Forewords:

Made of Clay.

Taken from the dust of the earth, these books became something else, data images that happened in Ether Realms.  It’s always trying to breathe new life into old ideas - like us, they’re never quite ready to die.

Cheryl Penn.  

Making books out of clay,  

the work of a potter [shaping soil into pages]

the work of a writer [chiseling words out of sodden earth]

the work of a gardener [growing roots across fields]

the work of an architect [building stories through dust]

the work of a musician [composing songs engraved in ether]

The beauty of those clay books needed no enhancement, their stunning naked aura was evident to any eyes curious enough to see. But one can always demand more of books…

Marie Wintzer.

Rod Summers by Cheryl Penn

Rod Summers by Cheryl Penn

Unique book made from a collection of mailings by Rod Summers.  Pockets hold such works as Free Form Across the Universe (2014), Prometheus Extinguished Darkly 2014 (in which Rod was kind enough to write “Inspired by the free form poem Overheard by Cheryl Penn (2014), Shelf Life - our collaboration (2105) and An Undistinguished Martyrdom (for those I still love) (2015). There are also pockets holding Rods particular style of postcards, ranging from ‘anger management’ tools to the musings of Dr Moss Mure.  Please see: 

http://an-encyclopedia-of-everything.blogspot.com

a way to teach

I have students who have never painted. Yip, this is sadly the case.  The best way to deal with this is to demonstrate.  We do numerous 1/2 hour to 45 minute exercises where I demonstrate and they paint with me. This is such an example.  We were dealing with still life, monochromatic, cool tones and painting glass in this exercise.

Bennett, John. (USA) TLP’s and a Bare Moon - Artists Book made for An Encyclopedia of Everything - The Expanded Version.

Unique pocket book made from TLP’s and two artists books sent via Mail, collated by Cheryl Penn. Pockets are made from envelopes in which these sendings arrived.  John M Bennett is an experimental language artist who also runs a small press, Luna Bisonte Prods, founded in 1974.  He has produced and published literally THOUSANDS of publications, as well as acting as an avid collector of “modern avant-garde, experimental and/or unclassifiable literature in the belief that future generations will one day reap the rewards of his efforts.  It is important to collect these writers because, as has been the case over and over in the history of literature, the best and most innovative writing, the writing that advances the art and that in the future becomes the classic and defining work of a period, is almost always the work of outsiders”. 

(Quoted from…  http://www.3ammagazine.com/3am/stockpiling-the-avant-garde-john-m-bennett/ ) - an article by David F. Hoenigman (2009).

I am fortunate to hold - dare I venture to say, the biggest collection of Johns work in Africa???  He is VERY generous with his sendings and this book contains a few examples of ‘TLP’s” - “tacky little pamphlets” (his own terminology) and two artists books Bare Moon and The Lunch the Gravel. Bare Moon is produced by Zwirn “a whitewall of sound publication edited by Jim Clinefelter”. 

It’s a gorgeous small, square format book of poems stamped on found materials such as maps and text books, indicating the world is touched by the bare moon.  I wondered if John’s poetry is Otherstream - and found this comment -

“John M. Bennett, whom I consider the most insanely creative otherstream poet on earth (because innovative in dozens of ways, in dozens of different kinds of poems…

I’ve called him “the Jackson Pollock” of poetry because of so many of his poems’ struggled ascent from the reptilian bottom of human feeling into a sub-demotic splatter that eventually coheres into a kind of finally understood momentary but full state of mind” (Bob Grumman. 2014, available on-line at  http://poeticks.com/bob-grummans-small-press-review-columns/14625-2/ ). ( ‘Otherstream’ was coined by Grumman in the 80’s).

I must mention my latest acquisition which arrived yesterday - Motel Moods published in 1980 - great stuff - MANY thanks John.