RECEIVED: VisPoCard (Visual Poetry) from Nico Vassilakis (Seattle, Washington, USA)

[De Villo Sloan]

Mail-art card from visual poet Nico Vassalikis (Seattle, Washington, USA)

 

March 10, 2011 - Nico Vassalikis sent this wonderful, stripped down piece from his book "Text Loses Time." The stark use of black and white (technically not colors) is very powerful. To me, this piece is a wonderful, reversed imaging reference to the tradition of concrete poetry as structures of letters and words on the field of the paper page. Someone will tell me this is just the impression of a cell phone, I'm sure; but the linear white forms suggest to me the concept of written text and the syntax upon which it is built through a process of creation, destruction, and renewal - an excellent minimalist piece that speaks to me. Here's the reverse side:

 

The wonderful thing about the mail-art network is the ability to build a community of artists. Through friends, one can constantly discover people you were not aware of doing work of interest to you. I learned about Nico Vassilakis through visual poet Geof Huth (New York, USA). I've followed Geof's work for years, but I probably would never have dug into it the way I am now without the motivation of mail-art.

 

"Text Loses Time" by Nico Vassilakis is published by ManyPenny Press in Moscow, Idaho, USA. This seems to be an imprint sponsored by Crag Hill. A guy named Crag Hill was a center of vispo in the San Francisco Bay Area of California for a long time; he had a zine called Score - has to be the same Crag Hill. I guess I need to check this out.

 

Some work by Nico Vassilakis:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/28683642@N04/

 

More information about "Text Loses Time" by Nico Vassilakis:

http://www.lulu.com/content/1233754

 

Geof Huth's blog with lots more about Nico Vassilakis as well as many others:http://dbqp.blogspot.com/

 

MAIL-ART PSYCHIC

Your charm will be that Neptune is close to the sun. Whatever the tide takes out, remember it is just the universe filling your basket with better things. Involving chance. Bullfight cheer. Maybe. Lucky numbers: 6, 17, 22, 39, 45, 47

 

MAIL-ART COLOR OF THE DAY: Yellow

 

 

[De Villo Sloan]

gb is pat-trolling, de-letist

[De Villo Sloan]

Cheryl, thanks for the reality check. I think there's a lot going on in this piece. DW "got" an offer he couldn't refuse.

[cheryl penn]

i get it - no i got it. You trolling?

[De Villo Sloan]

cpsa - close your i. the content is textual in nature. would nico have the nic-ups?

[cheryl penn]

Great blog - no, no cell phone here, I too see 'stripped down' (very descriptive) reference to textual structure.