Xx Jones's Blog (137)

This card does not reveal the sender, so I am making a wild guess. I think it is from David Stafford, who's pieces elsewhere are being sold for hundreds and thousands of dollars! He kindly offered to send me something for free.

I had a look…

Some time ago Dean and I had a discussion about a particular type of vintage tourist postcards, where an image of the place is placed within the letters of the name, which I like. Dean came up with the term "raised letters". And now he…

A nice surprise came this week from South Africa from Cuan Miles. A surprise because we had no contact before. However, I did send something to South Africa a while ago. 

The card is a delicate collage of a piece of a…

This letter came a while ago, but I forgot to blog it. A beautiful dark blue envelope with an angel holding scales and lots of stamp portraits of mail artists. 

I recognize Erni Bär and as far as I know one shows "E" himself. Included was an…

I had prepared a small package for Erni to send today, and as he is sadly not with us at the moment, I am going to do some self-publishing. Here are the pieces that I sent to Erni. The bar codes on the envelope are references to a recent online conversation about barcodes, which involved Katerina from Greece and Dean from France as well. The brown wrapping paper came from Erni in an earlier letter and I recycled it.…

Laurence offered some tea, and a really nice package with tea & art arrived. At first I will show you the envelope cut open.

Unfortunately my French is very, very rusty, and I have not decyphered the text fully, but I do like the image of the painting very much. A kitchen window, an open book, some autumn birds - it sets the scene for a homely cup of…

More of Art Tower's sweet characters - robots and ladies. And tangerines!  My favourite is the girl with the big heart on the envelope! I love the fountain pen hand writing. Thank you Mr.  Art Tower…

I sent Torma Cauli an altered postcard from Vienna, and was surprised to find it blogged on his website already a few days later. Oh well, after all Budapest is only a few hours distance from Vienna. But then, really quickly, I also received a postal response: a fascinating haptic collage mounted on a card from the Goethe Institute. Wonderful! Thank you, Torma!…

A double surprise in my mailbox - on two days in a row - came from Moan Lisa. I got what I understand to be a lovely personal message on this postcard. And I got a large recycled envelope with some cool stamps from Russia. I take the medals as an award for my outstanding work at the Moan Lisa Art Academy! Inside the envelope there was a family collaboration piece of mail art. It features a little rat or mouse painting and reminds me of a favourite - the classic picture book Frederick by Leo…

Sometimes mail art provides real challenges, or puzzles to solve. It took me a while to put this one together, possibly because I got Card No. 2 before Card No. 1. Only today I realized, hang on, two cards from Texas, there may be a connection and now it makes all sense. …

Today is William Blake's birthday. Maybe you would like to add something to the William Blake group to celebrate. It's kinda lonely there :-)

My submission for Assignment No.3 Moan Lisa's Art Academy.

Last but not least here is the second installment of the mail art I got from Erni Bär this week. Erni is getting a lot of coverage these days so I am not going to overdo it. But then, blimey, this is one productive mail artist! 

The envelope features lots of Erni stamps, but also the "E is not dead" stamp.…

I was just having a little internal mail art crisis of faith - thinking about what crazy stuff I got myself into here, sending absolutely ridiculous things through the post. Do you ever get that? And then I found this letter from Ruud in my mailbox, with sheets to send in with samples of rubber stamps for his archive.  I have not sent anything to Ruud yet, waiting for the right…

An unexpected laminated card came from Pedro Bericat, and I am still mystified what this slightly crumbling object between that plastic covering is. It seems that Pedro wants me to record some sound of silence. I have not had time yet to check out the website, but I will. Thank you, Pedro! Coming from Austria it will be tempting though to add a bit of Sound of…

Maybe I shocked Barry with my enthusiasm but I really do like his art - you have to check out his website: http://www.barryhall.co.uk Barry was nice enough to send me another crow on a card…

Well, I was told by a senior IUOMA member that self promotion is important in the art circus, so here I am reporting a bit more about my recent work.

Today I received mail from Erni Bär and it was quite a package. I did not get the time yet to study it all and blog about it, so I will do it in installments. Erni had lost a bet and honoured it by sending me this altered dollar bill by E. Here is a small assemblage to say thank you! :-)…

A beautiful card from Carina made my heart skip a beat. It is a photo transfer - I am still mystified as to how this is done - and a wonderful juxtaposition of what looks like a Chinese factory worker making what - orange rugs? opposed to a bunch of white men in suits in what could be courtroom. They are looking at something or somebody outside the frame. I love…