FOR NO IDEA'S MINI MAIL ART GROUP

[Valentine Mark Herman]

Hi!

Please look at the Arty Slide International Group which I started in 2012. It was as Mini as I could think of then. We held 2 good Slide Art exhibitions in France. I still have the Arty Slides (somewhere!) that IUOMA colleagues contributed. Bianca has died, alas. I have gained a Stidio and moved to bigger bits of art.

Here is the text that started it all:

The origins of Arty Slides

Some artists have studios.They are lucky.Some artists can make BIG works of art in their studios.I don’t have a studio. I can’t make big works of art.

At the top of our house I have a Study that I sometimes refer to as my ‘Permanent Installation’. (Other people are less, much less, flattering about it, referring to is as, for example, ‘Val’s junk room’.)

The Mission Control Centre of my Study is my Desk. I have had it for almost 45 years, and it is where all of my literary and artistic works are created.

It is not very big, and indeed the writing surface is only – and I now stop to measure it – 116 by 38 cms, or 44 by 15 inches. Anything and everything I do must be done within and on that very limited space.

But I don’t always have 116 by 38 cms or 44 by 15 inches of space on the Mission Control Centre’s working surface because I have to share it with Bianca – my large black cat – who, when she stretches out and goes to sleep, takes up at least half of the available space. I don’t know exactly how much working room I have when Bianca is asleep on my Desk but as she takes up between a third and a half of it it’s not very much.

And so I have a very limited working surface, and that is why all of my works of art  -- envelopes, postcards, even collages and assemblages – are on a small scale.

I have recently downsized my art accordingly, and am now working on what I call ‘Arty Slides’. These are miniature works of art that fit into a 35mm photographic slide. (Remember film? Remember slides?)The available working space is 35 by 23 mm. That’s all. The art has to fit into that space, and a bit more can be fitted onto the frame itself.

Each Arty Slide is made up of a visual image taken from, inter alia, old cigarette cards, postage stamps, Victorian studio portrait cards, my drawings and aquarelle paintings, clippings from books and magazines, adverts and packaging material, etc.

So far I have developed Arty Slides in two formats: i) the standard 35 by 23 size, ii) a double size (2 x 35 by 23)      obtained by opening out a photographic slide.

I typically display the Arty Slides in groups of 3 double size ones, and sometimes add a standard Slide to a threesome. The possibilities of combining Arty Slides in different groups of 3 are almost endless, and it’s interesting to explore different combinations, whether linked by a common theme or not.

Two last points. 1. it’s very hard to get hold of photographic slides as they haven’t been produced for many years. Every weekend I search flea markets for them, but am seldom lucky enough to find any. 2. it’s possible to make even smaller Arty Slides using the half frame 35mm format