Received: Assemblage mail-art from Karen Champlin (Chicago, Illinois, USA)

[De Villo Sloan]

October 7, 2010 - Karen Champlin sent me a new set of her mail-art assemblages, which I appreciate very much. It just seems to me her work gets better and better. In a previous blog, I discussed at length the relation of her work to vispo. Her use of textual material becomes increasingly more diverse and complex. This piece is the first example of something I've received from her that begins to incorporate ascemic writing - where you are creating your own alphabet (or hieroglyphs).This can be extended into the creation of words and a syntax. Delving further into this area, I am gaining an increased understanding and appreciation for what Cheryl Penn is doing. This is truly a borderland between the visual arts and poetry. Karen, as before, I'm sorry the scans didn't come out all that well; and this time around Grigori Antonin is MIA so none of his great detail shots can be linked. All the same:

I really appreciate that Karen can use her art to express and explore her faith. It just shows how at the IUOMA and through mail-art there is tremendous freedom. I'm beginning to think that this freedom and the acceptance and support of friends contributes to the acceleration of people's growth. The evolution of people's work seems to move very rapidly, compared to other environments:

I've always felt that there was a long-standing connection between visual poetry (originally concrete poetry) and mail-art. When I first began receiving mail-art, nearly all of it was sent from New York City. One of the characters whose work I received (what I remember was big batches of stuff by many different people, maybe early add and pass?) was named Hannah Weiner. I think she was appropriated by the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets, or they tried. I'm pretty sure she always lived in NYC. Anyway, she claimed to have some unusual derangement of the senses or perhaps more kindly stated a gift, where she saw words and symbols all over everything. For instance, you and I might look at a white wall. For most of us, we would call it blank. Hannah Weiner would see it covered with words. So she wrote this stuff down. Often the words would be sideways or in strange patterns, which she would try to reproduce accurately in her notebooks. She wrote volumes, and some of it appeared as mail-art, some published in avant zines (that often relied on mail-art for content), and books. Vispo today has roots in many places but definitely in the history of mail-art, which reminds me I received something on that subject I'll post later.

This is Hannah Weiner.

http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/weiner/

(Thank you State University of New York - I'm really pleased to see my tax dollars at work.)

As ever, thanks Karen

[cheryl penn]

As a result of this blog I made Matters Spiritual Spiritual Matters for Karen - I tried to put the photo on this blog because it was my discussion contribution but alas no joy... The image is in my photos.

[Marie Wintzer]

Joining in to praise both DVS and KC. True artists...

[De Villo Sloan]

Erni - who's guilty of being abstract now? I'm trying to unlearn as fast as I can. Look at my vispo, then. You find some pictures somewhere, rip them up, then pound the hell out of them with rubber stamps. Maybe not as beautifully simple as mailing flattened Lingodo sausage cans to people (how do they get through customs?), but I'm getting there. Do you wonder I think Karen is some kind of genius?

Bifidus - you continue to amaze me with your ability to span millennia in a few sentences, and I understand it. I'm still reeling from your "The Cantos" on a postcard. You are a prime candidate to produce Epic Mail-art - some sort of Illiad and Osyssey thing. I had to look up Hall of Bulls - see how y'all are so good for me? - and yeah, the cave drawings, the petroglyphs - are these vispoets somehow returning us to the archaic, the primal roots of culture before kultur? And the illuminated books - how beautiful - are we in some New Dark Ages and that's what people are doing? Bifidus does raise points to ponder.

And we're all - this Crimsoned Giant thing is already being discussed - and it hasn't even been produced. This is evolving into some kind of performance itself, "Authors of a Book that has not be written." This thing is destined to be some kind of underground classic not matter what happens.

Thanks you 2 - I am trying to write a real review of 2 new books D-B C has had come out in Russia - and the old critc-jargon stuff is resurfacing as a result. My apologies, truly, because this should be fun

Hey, it's October. When Wall Street belches earthquakes happen all over the world - I'm a little nervous.

I really don't know much about organized religion. I think they did a lot of art about it once. Sorry if there was any wasted time on Pollock - I did read that big biography a few years ago and it was discussed, but didn't have the strength to paw through it last night. And that guy, I doubt he was thinking about medieval art.

[Bifidus Jones]

I tried to find an image of the Pollack piece you were looking for, but had no luck either. Carroll's childhood included a Catholic education--that kind of stuff comes out in people's work. Maybe my artwork suffers because of it, but I"m not one for organized religion. Been reincarnated too many times. The Hall of Bulls in France--I was in on that. Book of Kells, petroglyphs in the 9-mile canyon of Utah--I was there too. Except for one unfortunate stint as a member of the Donner party I have always been a collaborative artist...bonjour y'all

[De Villo Sloan]

Comrades Bifidus and Erni: I never imagined a few months ago having like-minded friends like you to stimulate my thinking and open up new areas of art. That we are able to collaborate as part of Cheryl's project is just fantastic. You two expand and clarify what I was thinking when I sat down last night and really LOOKED at Karen's pieces and marveled at what she's doing. I was looking for a Jackson Pollock painting in which he used two-by-fours (pieces of wood) soaked in paint to make impressions that look like three crosses around which to lay on his famous drips - I had read a response to these that said they were referencing medieval paintings and Christianity. Only I couldn't find the thing. There are the "Blue Poles," but that's not it. I know the thing exists. Erni, I also thought about Jim Carroll's Catholicism and how so many people must have thought it was joke when it was heartfelt, even being a response to life on "Desolation Row." Thanks again for adding to the expression.

[Bifidus Jones]

Great posting, DVS. It's not easy to articulate the ever-evolving momentum that is mail-art but you do it well. What I see from everyone is a tremendous confidence in self-expression and a willingness to keep expanding that goes into mail art. Some pieces are intellectually created and some are just downright funny and entertaining. And I see the genuine appreciation for receiving each piece of art in the mail. All is valued here and that keeps people inspired.