The Night Sky Incident

This is a case in which the receiver has no clue what's going on and since I've finally pronounced it finished then promptly mailed it off, my night sky piece is fit to be posted.

The first mention of this piece appeared in Snags and Cake, followed by another bit in Brain Drain (which you can go read or stay tuned because both pretty much dealt with the same problem -- I can be boringly fixated on subjects). The first time I stepped away from this creation, it was beyond obvious that it was boring as all hell. Thus generating two posts in which I chew to death my frustration over what to do to fix the complete snore fest that was my night sky piece (strangely enough night sky isn't the title but then again the person who receives this should get the point).

Anyways, in the end I added more "stars" and called it a day. I like it (not as much as googly eye Paranoia) but it has its place: a perfectly predictable melding of black, blue, red pastels with white pastel "stars" then glossied up with fixative (the glossy kind). Admittedly I may have over sprayed this piece with fixative but it ended up adding some character (and I survived the fumes!) so it's all good.

So this is Walk?.

It's simple and direct: one hopes the receiver of said piece doesn't completely trash it...and that they get it.

One of the best parts of living in the rural mountains of NC is the number of stars I can see on a clear night. Totally beats out Syracuse...so I win right?

In the Works

At this point, as I have sent off the night sky piece, I have a few ideals being considered for the next project....in no particular order (but I did number them):

1. Leafless trees: I'm afraid this is very much along the lines of the night sky but worse. I've tried this before and I always end up with squiggly lines that look nothing like trees or branches. I will be working with a photo this time to help me nail this one...
   
2. Circular post card (almost stealing this idea really from the hand made wedding invitations an old friend did): I have this great cutting board, exacto knife and circle patterns to create this and though it will cut down on the space on the back, I think it would work really well . I also have this incredible tiger graphic that has inconvenient text so the circle would be a good shape for it.
   
3. My wax stamp: I have a monogram wax stamp (you know for when you write letters and pretend/wish you were from another, older century..only with indoor plumbing). In fact, I have two. I was thinking that it would make an interesting feature to add to each piece.
   
4. For some reason I think I want to create a winking goat. That's it, the entire ideal.
   
5. Desperately seeking an ideal to justify buying a spool of smiley face ribbon. I got nothing for it yet and I am very afraid I bought it because I have a weird affection for ribbons and smiley faces. (Normally separately. Normally. heh.)

I wonder what will make the cut....probably just the goat.

Always Watching You

While Sleepless Night, Bedroom Ceiling (oh why did I make the title so long and annoying to type over and over again) was the first piece I showcased here at Amateur Hour, it was not my first creation. Since the friend who received the following piece also follows the blog (Hey, my first and only follower!) I didn't want to post it until after she got it in the mail.

At the begining of this new hobby I did a tour around the crafty section of the local Wal-mart (forgive me mother for I have sinned). I pretty much grabbed things that just appealed to me, I tend to shop that way often, and one of the things I picked up was an assorted pack of googly eyes. The kind you can rattle and will follow you wherever you go...

I knew pretty much from the second I picked them up exactly what I wish to do with them, hence...Paranoia:

(I just love this piece...again dubious artistic merit but come on, love the googly eyes..freaky and cool all in one with a dash of Sesame Street).

This is another Index Card Creation: I did a lot of scribbling with sharpie colored markers and then used a glue gun to attach an entire packet of googly eyes. Also, while I do enjoy the ease of using plain index cards (they were cheap too!) I am constantly plagued by the need to glue two together to give it some extra strength....(Oh and I doodled on the back...sorry no pic of that)

I finished this just before phoning an old friend (by that I mean a friend of long standing...heh) and after describing the project and my googly eye art she wanted this particular piece.

So I blame Fran for leading me astray from the general guidelines of mailart.

This remains to date my favorite work: I love the look of it and it matches well with the  feeling I was trying to recreate. The ideal that paranoia often includes an over-the-top sense that you are constantly being watched and any feelings, happy (red) sad (blue)..and so on and so forth, which you wish you could hide are always visible to others.

Plus, again, googly eyes are so much fun. There will be more: I have some that are all flirty and winky.

Brain Drain

My mind is tired.

At the library: its still tax season, I'm branching off into what we like to call collection development (or to everyone else buying books --- if it were only that simple I'd be a master of the universe) and we are about to start what is our busiest month yet: April. (Civil War exhibits, National Library Week, an e-book petting zoo (staff only, so I can help you get your e-book, theoretically) and I set myself up to teach no less than four computer classes...(and since I did it myself I really shouldn't be whining about it but am I really whining? questions for the ages)).

So anyways...

The point, my mind can't take any more or the gray mater will explode and I will be nothing more than zombie food. In order to avoid this fate I started my Sunday nice and slow by reading a mind-candy( IE, romance) paranormal trilogy Court of Angels by Stella Cameron:

1. Out of Body
2. Out of Mind
3. Out of Sight 

(Hang on there is a point...it's coming, I swear.)

It was okay and now my laundry is done...no progress on the mailart front though. Still wondering what I'm going to do about the night sky, created a collage piece centered around the color orange (of which I am not a fan....though the dislike has continued to keep me from committing a felony) and am considering buying shellac. Why I don't know, maybe to cover the collage piece so it has a smooth service...couldn't I use a varnish? Maybe just hairspray....

(Shoot there isn't a point...I lost it somewhere and you know what?  I am not going to go and find it because I have other work to do!)

Mail it

As I am still struggling with my night sky, and am resolved to not actively think about other projects (that is I am trying not to think about the tree picture I took while hiking the paths on Mount Jefferson and how much I've always wanted to do something around the way leafless trees look against the sky).

See how good I am at ignoring it...


So I thought I'd share some of my mailart research with you. These links were the ones I thought sounded really cool that I found on the other links page of the postcrossing website. Some are about sharing an object and watching it travel the world (think of that gnome in the Amelie movie) and sometimes it about sharing a creation.

Mostly I just wish I was either talented enough or a lot less stingy to take part in some of these sites:

(and they are arranged in a ranked listing, starting with the ones I'm most interested in)

1. postcrossing: send a postcard, get a postcard from around the world
2. ToyVoyagers: oh yes, toys traveling the world depending on the kindness of strangers
3. International Girl Aereogrammes: making a letter that is also the envelope and mailing it
4. PostSecret: you have probably heard of this one but who doesn't enjoy a little cathartic release now and then
5. BookCrossing: Share your books with people all over the world who wish to read them...

I love and hate the BookCrossings idea...love because what is more fun than sharing books with people who want to read them (hello, librarian). Hate because if say, one of my books is out there hopping around the globe, I can't read it and that upsets me.

See, I said I was stingy.

Snags and Cake

So,
I've hit a few snags. Things have gone wrong. Not hideously, dangerously or even illegallly wrong but as they say in Meet the Robinsons : I just don't know how well this plan was thought through...or something like that.

First, my attempt to create a night sky piece has produced a very boring postcard. A total snore. In addition the person to whom this card was going to has some background in graphics and it was doomed to ridicule either way. Ugly and unappealing are okay but boring is completely unacceptable.

Now I am focused on trying to fix it. Add more to the original piece? Try same ideal in different medium? I can't really decide...I think I keep looking at it from other people's perspectives.

I have a thing for the night sky, it's like the ocean (actually large bodies of water in general), I find it calming and soothing but so awesome (Lizzie, please note the appropriate use of the word awesome). Anyways.....

Lastly, naturally, Sleepless Night, Bedroom Ceiling has the wrong address on it. Let this be a lesson to all: update your address book regularly. On the other hand, I left a note via facebook for the receipent (MMC) which led to a briefish IM run in where I directed her to the blog and caught up on old times.

That conversation solidified something that has been rattling around in my head (enter tiny philosophical bit): Individuals create. Doesn't really matter what your primary interests are or what job you do, there is some little bit of your life in which you make something. Maybe others don't consider it intellectually challenging or interesting or artistic or original but there's a satisfaction to be found in the making of something physical that you share with others.

In my friend's case, sharing is the best part! It may be the only green food I would truly enjoy eating...

MMC's Ben 10 cake for Alexander

I like it! Mostly because I can't even get a nice swirly pattern when I frost a cake, let alone manage to frost a figure...

Ugly but Compelling, right?

Okay so here is the first piece I'm able to post:

Sleepless Night, Bedroom Ceiling

I used two kinds of plaid ribbon and made some very rough squares with a black sharpie marker. It was a messy but simplistic project. Using Aleene's Turbo Tacky Glue, I wove and glued the ribbon strips right on to my index card. It ended up drying within a few days but I attribute that to the fact I went a little glue crazy (is there anyone who doesn't enjoy peeling strips of tacky glue off their fingers?). Being Turbo Tacky Glue it was suppose to be faster...

It also warped so the index card with ribbon strips spent days underneath the following tomes:

1. Van Gogh A Retrospective edited by Susan Alyson Stein
2. American Arts at the Art Institute of Chicago: From Colonial Times to World War I distributed by Hudson Hills Press, New York
3. Monet A Retrospective edited by Charles F. Stuckey
4. America's Art Smithsonian American Art Museum by Theresa J. Slowik

That's when I added what was suppose to be black squares. My lack of patience produced less than perfect results. After which it became very apparent that while I found it endearing, it was pretty much ugly. Also, I don't think it has many redeeming qualities as an art piece.

On the other hand as representative work of what the bedroom ceiling of my childhood room (it's still my room really, who else would have it...) use to look like, it is spot on.

I mailed it out today to my best friend from high school, who spent the odd holiday vacation with my family up north, who lives in Denmark now.

Can't wait to see if it arrives without falling to pieces. Go, Go Turbo Tacky Glue!

Setting Up

I have two mailart projects in the works and one is complete. It is also scanned but won't be posted until after its been mailed out.

I realize I need some ground rules for this undertaking, so here goes:

1. Each mailart piece will be posted and added to a creation page.(Right now there is only the Index Card Creations --- the basis for current work, so more may be added later)
2. Posting will occur after the piece has been either: mailed, received or destroyed (depending on circumstances)
3. Each post will contain a title, materials list and thoughts behind the creation as well as information regarding where it has been sent (which may not be detailed due to privacy issues)
4. Each piece is individual and unique (although of questionable artistic merit)
5. Any mailart received will be also be posted accompanied by any attribution information provided and my personal feelings on the piece.

Again occasional there will be a break in mailart posts for tiny bits of philosophical wisdom by yours truly (which may not include any wisdom or philosophy but will be tiny).

One day...

So, (I begin so many things this way, perhaps writing on a daily basis will allow me to correct such annoying behavior...I also have many asides sitting smack dab in the middle of my posts) one day at work I was working on an interlibrary loan with a patron for this interesting contemporary art magazine anthology, Hi-fructose vol 1, and as she works over at a local post office we begin talking about mail...

I love getting mail, real mail: Letters, cards, postcards. They have to have some substance to them as well, a card with a cool graphic or a letter filled with different thoughts and weird ideas. Postcards with fake names written instead of my own (I have to admit here that I never have received such a postcard, I'm often the sender: Here's to you Sailor Rosner and Ma & Pa Kettle).

Upon this revelation, the patron begins telling me about mail art (I know I'm referencing wikipedia and I'm a librarian but it is a good general description with history and this isn't an academice paper). Basically artists create these mailable works of art, letter or postcard, and send them out to different people who place calls for pieces. She told me to look it up...so I did.

I'll get more into what I found but what I realized was this is for me. I'm not a real artists in any sense, but I do love to create and I love getting mail....

So.

Welcome to Amateur Hour, my adventures in mail art....