Blog post undate for Katerina Nikoltsou - Like the Circles of Your Mind

[cheryl penn]

Mail Art Received Third Week of February 2011

This I think is one of my all time favorite pieces from excellent mail art friend Katerina.  The paint quality is fantastic - high gloss on white interspersed with Katerina's now signature tracing paper. 

My second favorite set of lyrics in the whole world - well, for today that is - as a woman, Katerina knows we are FULLY entitled to change our minds at ANY given second :-)

Like a tunnel that you follow

To a tunnel of its own

Down a hollow to a cavern

Where the sun has never shone

Like a door that keeps revolving

In a half forgotten dream.

You KNOW I was listening to this when I made all those envelopes - right?? Now I'm going to make some more - this time inspired by YOU.  I LOVE it - thank you Katerina :-)

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This piece of mail arrived together with all the others I blogged - but - I saved the best till last :-)

Katerina sent a beautiful boekie of palimpsestic-like pages, made with tracing paper, collage, bold orange textured paper and ephemera.  Although not a palimpsest in the true sense of the word (to rub away),  beautiful images are created by SEEING THROUGH to the other side (yes you know my expression!)

an exploration of the essence of transparency - a compound image.The turning of the nearly transparent pages gives them different backgrounds and permutations of image. A negative and a positive image - there is a residual concept in the use of these materials - thank you Katerina - an EXCELLENT contribution to The World is a Town Project - o I'm smiling - have been for quite a while - and especially now as I revisit this work - thank you.

 

Oh, its been an uptight few days what with loosing important things, including Horizontal Alex. :-( BUT Katerina came to the rescue (AS USUAL) and her haptic boekie arrived :-)

It was in one of her very recognizable envelopes, wrapped in tissue with - is it O Sweet Basil, or Run out of Thyme?

No thorns and nasties with this one - THANK YOU Katerina - AND for coming to Alex's rescue - where would we all be without you???

Mail Art received 17th November 2010

Katerina's Upright Alex arrived. He was Uptight because he was soggy! Rain makes havoc of invasions - ask History!

I dried him off under a warm wind, wiped his tears, ironed his wrinkles and told him not to worry - Mom Katerina said she had made him again - and he wouldn't be Upr(T)ight he would be horizontal, with a hinge! Alex is happy again :-)

Last week I received a beautiful envelope from Katerina. (20th October 2010)

The envelope was printed bright sky blue, in contrast to the redness of the autumn card inside. Spring skies in Autumn days.

I can sense the migration of birds to new lands - the swallows leaving Europe and coming towards Africa - this is beautifully captured in this print. With the building of the new King Shaka airport in La Mercy Durban, all bird watchers are worried about the plight of the marsh swallows. They fly from Europe in their millions to nest in the marshy grounds which lie to the south of the airport. They rise at about 4 to feed and fly, so authorities SAY that there are no flights from 4 - 6pm??? An international airport??? The red sticker? Here it means 'sold' when on an art work - I'm sold Katerina - thank you!

[cheryl penn]

Enjoy Istanbul lucky thing x

[Katerina Nikoltsou (MomKat)]

Have a nice weekend and i hope the swallows survive the airport!

[Katerina Nikoltsou (MomKat)]

Greetings to South Africa from Istanbul. I am visiting here until tuesday when i shall return to Thess..and the Land of Alexander! Glad you liked my Autumn/Spring card,Cheryl...the red dot is really from a package of red dots i had for an art exhibit, and as you can see, I use them now in mail art (yours is for the "sun") because of the lack of sales at the art exhibit. sob.sob. (and blame the spelling and caps errors on the computer!)

[cheryl penn]

Such bad spelling - sorry! teh is THE and He is We!! The HaDeeDa's make the most untidy huge nests and rear only one chick - if two are hatched, one gets kicked out by the stronger one when there is no more room. They have long beaks and eat earthworms... They pair for life and always nest in the same spot. Those untidy exposed nests survived the storm on Thursday - unbelievable how resilient creation can be.

[cheryl penn]

Monkeys are the only wild creatures we see - aside from alot of birds. All teh European swallows migrate to our area, so there are many of birdspecies. He have this insane bird called a HaDeeDa -its huge and screams all the time...

[cheryl penn]

Hey - nice to hear from you. Not attacked exactly - they come around every second/third day and raid the houses for food. The large males with the brightest blue and red butts you have ever seen get quite aggressive. The weird part is sometimes they just hang around on the balcony, sit on the furniture (yes they do) and groom each other. I know they are dangerous and there is a problem with rabies, but their natural habitat is severely limited. The babies are SO CUTE!!