Last 5 - Postcarded #6

Group 4

Third 6 - Postcarded #6

Group 3

Second set of 6 Postcarded #6

Group 2

first 6 Postcarded #6

Group One, in no particular order.  I just grabbed them and scanned them... 

Postcarded # 6 is on its way...Pictures start tomorrow

Some of my reader(s) know about Postcarded.... it is a series of postcards I have been sending out since 2014.  There is only a run of about 17 or so.  This issue is 23 which is a LARGE number for me.

Postcarded #6 is different also because each one of the 23 is different.  Yep, I am sending out 23 different cards.  It all started with the class I took from Jane Davies .  The class was Gelliplate Monoprints and Collage... not the real name but she doesn't seem to be offering it at this moment, so I can't tell you exactly.  I LOVED it.  She is a very good teacher and really goes all out on her online classes in terms of communication and support and structure and is SO worth it.

HOWEVER I ended up with a TON of cannon fodder and I kept staring at that huge pile of papers thinking what to do with them.  I also had a bunch of failed collages, and they were the most annoying.  So, dear reader, I destroyed them by tearing them each into 6 even pieces with no regard for what they looked like or what little sections of them I found interesting.  Six pieces from each collage, all the same side.  There were a bunch of them, so now I had about 60 small rectangles with bits of paper stuck to them.

The next step, for me, was to try turning those little sow's ears into purses, hopefully silk purses.  As I went along it became more and more interesting.  These little guys were cute!.  Once started they became a sort of obsession, one or two every day, like vitamins.  Then, what to do with finished product?

I have not sent out a Postcarded in over a year and it seemed like the answer, so I started glueing them onto postcard paper and all of a sudden I had lots to choose from and all I had to do (ha!) was address and write a little note on each of them.  SO they go into the mail today.  Europe and Canada should be there in about a week, or so, the US.... Wednesday and on...

Since they are all different, I scanned them in groups of six and will put the ones already mailed up here starting tomorrow 6 at a time. Once yours comes you can check it out and you can see what the rest turned out like.  If you aren't on the postcarded list and want to see how they look in "real" let me know by email and I will add you to the mailing, I have a number of them left.

so I am playing with mixed media non representational images

Sounds a lot more pretentious than I intend this to be.  These started out as gelliplate prints with collage on top, more gelliplate, more collage, some painting with a brush and a lot of staring at them and sighing.  I am not convinced that any of them are done, but at some point you have to take a break and walk away for a while.

I am only showing a couple, because I am still thinking about them all, and these may return in different combos later...

I have looked at them too long......... These were started in a class with Jane Davies, and her classes are amazing.  There is a plan to her process and she is very helpful in an online class.  This was the first online class I completed and actually looked at what everyone else was doing and enjoyed the experience.  The fact that I am still playing with a lot of the things I made in the class now (nearly a month after the class ended) says a huge amount about how much Jane manages to convey in the class. 

Two posts in two days... we may be going for a record here

I just wanted to update two things...
first these are the total number of stampettes so far.

I found that if I was relatively careful I could use the piece I cut out as a different stamp, which is nice for my sloppy "rustic" ways.  I did that with the triangles I cut out of the wagon wheel and with the wine glass that I cut out of a narrow left over piece.

I have backed most of the bigger stampettes with a third layer, as I did with the one I cut through too vigorously, and it does improve the stamping.  So I think I will stop now for a while and see how well they last.

THE JOURNAL

I had a couple of off list questions about what I was stamping these samples in.  (Surprises me that people read this as much, I am sure as it does you).

I found this big old Record book from 2013 in the "Library" that I created for the building that I live in.  I found people were tossing out decent books when they moved etc. so I scrounged some shelving and now we have a place where your books can live til someone else wants to read them.  It is interesting what shows up... why anyone would think that people want a 1964 book on calculus is a mystery to me... but if they have interesting pages I dissect them and keep the pages I like.   SO, earlier this year, some one left this:

and I just couldn't let it sit there unused.  SO I use it as a "studio journal".  I took a class from Sharon B. ages ago called An Artists Studio Journal, a Designer Workhorse and I loved it.  It looks like she isn't teaching it much anymore, but it made me think differently about how things marinate together in my mind.  So this is the current iteration of the Journal.  I slam everything in here, tear outs from the Times, printouts of things... articles and pictures that I love online, notes from friends, trash from the street and samples of inks and things I use.  I have several of these which I have used over the years since taking the class and they are wonderful brain stimulators. 

This one was obviously not designed to be stuffed, so I cut out hunks of pages as I go so it will sort of close...

and things hang out of pages, and sometimes neatness rules, but that is rare...

everything from Zen Master musings to David Bowie lyrics to new pen tryouts...  

Works with how my brain works and every time I open it or do something in it I think how lucky I was to have Sharon teach that class!!!!!!!

*** Added later: I just ran spellcheck on this post. It didn't like the word wagon combined with wheel.  I knew it would not like stampettes because I think I made that up.  But it also didn't like stimulators????? oh dear.  is my grasp on English going? 

Maybe I invented this...

I am absolutely not sure ... In any case, for a non- OCD person like me, it is a great idea.

I just made these.  I hate perfection in stamps or in stencils or in anything that looks "manufactured" so I tend to make my own stamps etc.  Cutting them takes time, and mine are always a little rough.  What I did here, which is MUCH faster than "real" stamp carving is to stick together, using the sticky backs, two Sticky Back Foam Sheets... when stuck together they looked like this:

and then I used my smallest Xacto blade and cut patterns, having drawn them first with a Sharpie.

In one I got a little enthusiastic with the Xacto and cut through both layers in a couple of places, so on that one I cut another square from a third Foam Sheet and stuck that to the back to hold it together.

I actually like this better, as it is a bit firmer when it prints so I may well do it to the others too.  Main thing is ... they print!!!

Will they last forever? probably not but they will be "rustic" which I love and quite inexpensive and fast to make.  I am loving the ease of making a bunch quickly. 12  sheets of sticky back foam are about $8 on Amazon and I made about a dozen squares and a few long thin stamps from 2 sheets. 

FUN!!

MOMA to see Edgar Degas: A Strange New Beauty...

But on the way there was this:

 It is a walkway between two blocks in the 50's and I have always loved the soaring space with the street out there...

And once there I saw this....

More about Edgar Degas: A Strange New Beauty is here. You can see the hand of the artist and his fingerprints in some of the prints, it is an amazing show.

I know that people often worry about old folks in the bath....

I am probably the most carefully watched old person in the shower.  ......

Three out of four watch me for my entire shower.  They go off once I get out, but I am rarely out of their sight...

why can't a corporation as big as the NY Times deliver the thing they are making?

This is a rant. There is no purpose for it other than to allow me to vent about something that is driving me absolutely crazy.  Just read it and giggle, there is no other possible response unless you are representing the NY Times.  In that case, please fix this.

It is fascinating to me that the NY Times cannot reliably deliver the newspaper to my door... a service for which I pay an EXORBITANT amount of money!

To aid in understanding my rant, the paper is supposed to arrive every day, 7 days a week, and I am not fussy about time as long as it is there by 8:30, which is when I generally go to look for it.

On Saturday, there is a big delivery, which includes significant sections of the Sunday paper, as well as Saturday's complete paper.

Today, Saturday, the delivery was late.  OK, they told me via email that it was going to be late, and I can roll with that.  It arrived about 9:30 and I set it down til I had fed all the fur kids and was ready to read.

I opened it to discover that I got most of the portions of Sunday I generally get.  I got the A section of Saturday, and that was it.  NO Saturday paper beyond the first section.  No Sports, no Art section, no business section, no obituaries, nothing beyond the A section of Saturday's paper.

NOW, when I go to report that, it seems that I am probably not reporting it in a way that will assure that I get Saturday's paper tomorrow and I am STRONGLY encouraged to read it all online since it was going to be late anyway.

Let me clarify to the NY Times... if I wanted to read it digitally, I would not pay an enormous amount of money to have the paper version delivered.  I do that because I want to READ that. I want today's paper.... the obituaries, the ads, the serendipitous exposure that occurs when one article or ad is near another one.  I want the PAPER!!!!  If tomorrow I get two copies of Sunday and no copy of Saturday I will not be at all surprised. Actually, if I get the rest of Sunday I will be surprised.  Each week presents a new opportunity for a new way for the NY Times newspaper to fail to deliver the NEWSPAPER!

Obviously, since I ventured into this rant, this is not the first time that my paper has failed to appear, either completely or with sections missing.  I just needed to put this out there with enough mentions of the NY Times in the body of the text so that perhaps, someone whose job it is to track reporting about the NY Times might find it.  Obviously I have been hitting the Kool Aid.

While I am at it, I have had several communications with the Book Editor about the Search capability, or lack thereof on the Times site. When I can search and find book reviews better by searching with Google vs. searching on the NY Times site for some of their articles there is something WRONG with the search function on the electronic version.  Let's see.... can't deliver paper version, can't make an electronic version that works as it should..... worrisome, isn't it?

I have not vacated the premises I promise

I have been gone...among the missing ... since Water Dog Calendar time but I am going to be back.  I have been gelliplate making and printing, and I think i may have things to tell.. so this is just a wave in passing, but I will be back.

The shrine that grows