RECEIVED: Friday Mail-Art Mystery

[De Villo Sloan]

 

September 23, 2011 - A few days ago, this wonderful piece of mail-art appeared in my PO box. I have pondered over it, studied it carefully, and cannot solve the mystery of who sent it. Am I overlooking the obvious as I am often prone to do?

 

This is a big collage (8.5" x 11" or A-4) on solid cardboard, reminding me of Erni Baer's (Hamburg, Germany) masterful work. I see a reference to concrete poetry of the typewriter era. The collage includes a very nice piece of concrete-based vispo, proving the artist is familiar with this kind of work. Could this be another masterpiece by Richard Canard (Illinois, USA)? The work is definitely at that level of talent. The reverse side offers even more wonder with some great text about e-mail vs. snail mail correspondence:

 

 

This displays the wry humor and wit of David Stafford (New Mexico, USA). Yet Thom Courcelle (Washington State, USA) is a great writer and artist. He is among the very few who could produce a piece such as this, perfection in all areas, faithfulness in detail. Or - Lord forbid - is this part of Grigori Antonin's new wave and I've been fooled yet again by The Grigster?

 

Regardless, a wonderful piece of mail-art worth sharing. And I ask: Who done it?

 

[De Villo Sloan]

Oh, forgot to mention a Skybridge observation: This does seem to have gone through the USPS without any postage being charged. I couldn't find any of the stamps indicating where it came from, so that added to the mystery.

[De Villo Sloan]

Hi Marie, yes! That trademark stamp is missing too.

 

Nancy, I didn't mean this piece is super-realism, far from it. A portion of David's work has that very polished graphic style that a mail-artist named RCBz (another of Marie's friends) links to the West Coast. Mike Dickau definitely has a lot of it in his work for sure. RCBz called it "West Coast surfer school" something or other. I always thought it was kind of interesting and funny. Being an Easterner yourself, you must notice that on the Atlantic side we tend toward the abstract and grungy a bit more, and then there's DK in the middle.

 

Cool post Skybridge. Looks oddly familiar.

[Nancy Bell Scott]

Typewriter vispo! (?) That's fabulous, Skybridge, thanks for posting.

[Marie Wintzer]

Great Friday blog! I had recognized David's style from the way he wrote the address. And he tried to fool you by not adding his signature stamp :-)) So many things to like in this piece!

[Nancy Bell Scott]

Super-realist--that wouldn't have been my first thought as far as categorizing goes, but what would have been? It's probably closer to the right term than anything else that comes up, esp with me since much of this is new and whenever you mention visual poetry or concrete poetry I have to think really really hard to put together an image of the true definition in my mind, and am never sure if what eventually appears there is accurate or true.

Typewriter art! (I love it and hadn't heard the term before, thank you Ruud). The retro-collage of David's is really great and captured my attention and admiration immediately. Thanks for the re-scan of the text on the back, DVS--the pondering and sort of wounded questioning come across as honesty about a huge (and hugely important) subject, even if David does judge part of his own writing as "pretentious."

"I miss trying to figure out what I think by putting it down on paper." That's the essence of the whole dilemma (or turn of events, to falsely try to be less judgmental), I think. I've said those very words hundreds of times over the past 6 or 8 years. The computer lets us babble on without stopping to think, because it's so easy to erase (at least from the screen), or easy to imagine some audience somewhere who might possibly be interested, so why not just spill it all. But long, complete thoughts fall by the wayside. They do. I see it in myself and in others.

That's a generalization, and there are exceptions, no question about it, but not nearly as many as there were a short time ago, maybe even just five years ago. Something very important about thinking--time, length, and completion?--is being lost.

Well this is becoming babbling, probably because I'm typing very fast on a computer.

That you're buying old typewriters is downright heartwarming, DVS! After closing shop and ultimately putting lots of stuff left over out on the street for people to take for free, I never got over putting two old typewriters out there. The people who found them were thrilled, which was a big plus and made me happy, but how I miss them.

[De Villo Sloan]

Here's a scan I hope you can read. "Are you ready for your close-up, Mr. Stafford?"

 

[De Villo Sloan]

Many thanks to David for filling us in and to those who are sharing their enthusiasm for the piece. I know David finds it a bit painful to have to explain his work, he just does it.

 

To me, the collage on the front is sort of a "War and Peace" of visual poetry. It would make a great cover for a vispo book. Should we auction for options on it?

 

Concrete poetry (aka think of today's visual poetry) had a love affair with the typewriter - y'all know I'm a nut about the history of this stuff. And the 1951 date on David's piece - accident or not - locates the period in time where a lot took off - although the electric typewriter, of course, changed thing yet again.

 

His addition of the "typewriter art" (as I've seen Ruud Janssen call it) also seems to reference the Age of Xerography when people were doing all kinds of strange distortions and blow-ups with photocopiers. Of course, computers have taken us someplace else. I think David's eye for detail is remarkable and the retro-collage tremendous, right down to ripped paper. I do think of him often as a super-realist.

 

The letter/email mini-essay on the other side shouldn't be missed. I'm going to have a go at the scanner again.

 

Nancy, I'm buying old typewriters (very cheap now) just to relive some Moments of Concrete Glory myself.

[Nancy Bell Scott]

p.s. Your "stuff" is art, IMHO. Bananas, eh? That's a much heavier topic than fatal indecision. Tread carefully.

[Nancy Bell Scott]

David, you're probably far from alone in lamenting the loss of the letter (and typewriter too). And I miss those things too, often fiercely. Finding mail art has eased some of that, though it's much newer for me than for you. Your "stuff" often already leans toward being fragments of letters--that sort of stream of consciousness aspect. What you sent me recently really felt like fragments of a letter or maybe journal too. Anyway, your wish to turn letters into mail art is great, go for it! It will come pretty naturally to you, don't you think? We already know you're a combination of nuts and extremely sane, so don't worry about that junk, you know? (Besides, who cares?) (That's what I'd want someone to say to me, haha.)

Speaking of what you sent me, I and who knows how many others are still waiting for you to give us the nitty-gritty about your presidential run in 1976. You might add it to the blog post that already has your campaign poster headlining it, or wherever. If you're not too shy, that is.

Sounds like it might be time today to switch from caffeine to sherry. Oops, it's still morning where you are. Tant pis.

[David Stafford]

The reason this probably doesn't look like something I'd do is because it's been gestating for a decade or more, waiting for that particular recipient, DeVillo to appear on the horizon. How old is it?: I put it together before the total eclipse of the typewriter. The concrete poetry burbling out was added for Devillo's benefit and the verbiage on the back is a lament for the letter, a form that I may not have mastered but sure felt comfortable with, and that, like the typewriter, has gone gone gone....My new strategy: turn letters into mail art. Will it work? I'm not sure. A lot of what I used to like about writing letters depended upon the recipient knowing my persona, uber-neurotic everyman. A stranger might think: this guy is just nuts. Man, the coffee is coursing through my veins at warp speed. DeVillo, thanks for putting me in the esteemed company of Thom, Erni and Grigori and all the wonderful comments people here continue to make about my "work?" (Stuff is the more accurate description.) Nancy, this weekend I'm going to set the monkeys free and see what they come up with. The next Hamlet is just around the corner but this time around the theme will not be fatal indecision but bananas, their manifold uses in contemporary fiction.

Careening and caffeineing out of your orbit, I remain, your humble satellite dish

(insert thundering John Williams theme plus whoosh noise here)