Received: A Fashionable Mail-Art Exchange with Linda Pelati (Milano, Italy)

[De Villo Sloan]

Mail-art by IUOMA member Linda Pelati (Milano, Italy)

 

January 11, 2011 - A holiday mail-art card from Linda Pelati arrived about a week ago. She makes excellent collages. I made friends with her back in September and sent her an envelope around that time. Included in that was my "Prada is Communism" piece, and I had some real moments of concern after I sent it to people in Italy. (The days of the Washington DC Correspondence School with its small but influential circle around St. Elizabeth's Hospital are gone - and so are their strong ties to Italy.) I even issued some frantic emails explaining that I wasn't trying to offend anyone. I finally pulled it out of circulation completely. (And this pales in comparison to the Moscow "Pig Father" incident.) I hate to think about what might have happened if I had sent it to China, which just serves as a reminder to think twice before you drop the letter. Here's the other side of Linda's piece:

Looks like Linda is wishing me a happy new year in"the gap between" art and life. The little communication we have had is via Google translator dada systems 2.0. I said I would send her some Petrarch sonnets back translated from English to Italian via the dada translator. Never happened, of course. Maybe I'll send some in this batch. Linda has an excellent blog where you can see much more of her work:

http//www.clochart.blogspot.com

 

Here's the piece I sent her. It doesn't seem so bad now: