RECEIVED: Vis-Text(ual) Mail-Art from Catherine Petre (Sint-Truiden, Belgium)

[De Villo Sloan]

Mail-art by IUOMA member Catherine Petre (Sint-Truiden, Belgium)

 

September 3, 2011 - Catherine Petre is a talented visual artist from Belgium who recently joined the network. I have greatly enjoyed seeing her explore different forms, styles, and concepts that are unique to mail-art. The work she sent me is completely impressive starting with the envelope (above) and its beautiful asemics as well as, it appears, a stamp Catherine created. The contents is a piece exploring layering:

 

 

Many at the IUOMA working in the areas of visual poetry and asemics have been experimenting with ways to achieve layering effects, ranging from stamping to photoshop. Note the complex field of textual and visual images created above. In this piece, Catherine furthered layering through the use a transparency sheet, which creates two distinct works:

 

 

This interested me because Cheryl Penn (South Africa) used a similar technique in one of her breakthrough chapters in the Asemics 16 collaborative book project. Asemics by Cheryl Penn:

 

 

Covering a wide range of mail-art possibilities, Catherine included some whimsical correspondence:

 

 

The note is much appreciated. I hope when I recover from the shock of doing five chapters and intros for Asemics 16, I can resume a more regular correspondence with friends. Here is the reverse side of Catherine's stunning envelope:

 

Many thanks, Catherine! You are on my list to receive a pair of authentic Attitude Girl Asemic Eyeglasses! Check out her blog to see more of Catherine's art: http://www.catherinepetre.com/

[De Villo Sloan]

Absolutely, people have done this with similar things for asemics; it's found material put in a new context.

[Nancy Bell Scott]

Honesty is the best policy. (I made that up just now.) Your asemic writing has shown up elsewhere, Catherine, and it's wonderful. No matter. Besides, many people would have thrown the gift paper out with the trash, and you didn't; you knew it was special. Of course, if you'd put it in the trash, we trashpo people could have found it and been ecstatic,but que sera sera.

[De Villo Sloan]

Catherine, comparisons only go so far. Your work is very distinctive. As you can see, I am very impressed by the asemic writing on the envelope as well as the art inside. This blog was great fun too!

[De Villo Sloan]

Yip, definitely Modigliani on the faces. I was thinking of Marc Chagall lithos where you get the dense concentration of figures:

[Marie Wintzer]

It also reminds me of the beautiful elongated faces Modigliani was painting.

Lots of things....

[Marie Wintzer]

Looks Chagall-like to me....

[De Villo Sloan]

Wait! Am I thinking of Chagall or Kandinsky? Damn, going to have to look it up now - was a show I saw a long time ago.

[De Villo Sloan]

Hi Marie, the asemics on the envelope is my favorite part. I didn't want to admit I covet the envelope so much. The b & w background on the inside piece - a mix of text images and abstraction - is really ornate and beautiful - it looks like a litho or etching. It makes me think of some of the more complex later Miro work that I think were lithographs. That doesn't turn up well in the scan, but Catherine pulled it off.

[Marie Wintzer]

I saw that envelope in Cathérine's picture gallery just before you posted that blog, and I thought it was fantastic. Now the contents, oh my, amazing beautiful!

[De Villo Sloan]

Glad you stopped by Catherine. People have made so many good comments I must respond, but later, as I'm in a bit of a pickle at the moment.

 

Yes Cheryl, "overstriking" when concrete poetry was mostly done with typewriters. I'm confident complex vispo layering can be traced back to that as well as similar practices from the visual arts.