RECEIVED: Edition #1 of Cheryl Penn's (Kwa-Zulu Natal, South Africa) AmaZing Zine w/ Bennett, TIC TAC, Tarantino, Vermeulen, Wintzer, Wahl, Skybridge, Nancy Bell Scott & more & more!

[De Villo Sloan]

Cover of the first edition of Cheryl Penn's (South Africa) mail-art zine.

 

September 23, 2012 - Like other contributors and IUOMA members who have seen the gorgeous scans, I was excited when Cheryl Penn's zine arrived in my mailbox and I could finally hold it and thumb through it at my leisure.

The care, individualization, production quality, and outstanding work of the contributors make the issues art objects - in accordance with Cheryl's book artist aesthetic. In addition to consistently stellar mail-art, the zine contains a wealth of visual poetry, asemics, haptics and other forms that have found a welcoming and sustaining place in the Eternal Network. 

 

 

The contributors range from longtime network veterans and even a few living legends to a newer generation:

 

 

For this blog, I include scans of selected pieces that caught my eye for one arcane reason or another. I had not intended or presumed to document Cheryl's project, which has been done very well elsewhere; however, the work is all so incredible I have fallen just a little short of scanning the entire thing.

In terms of trends, I do see a strong visual poetry presence as well as a healthy Fluxus representation, including Christine Tarantino (USA) and Roland Halbritter (Germany) who are not active at the IUOMA and perhaps less familiar.

The edition has a strong opening with Cheryl's introduction and the digital magic of RCBz (Minnesota, USA):

 

As with other projects, Cheryl thanks our IUOMA leader and founder Ruud Janssen (Netherlands). I suspect IUOMA again provided an ideal meeting place in cyberspace to help coordinate her project.

 

 

On the left (above) is work by Giovanni and Renata Stra DA DA (Italy) - a new discovery for me. On the right is vispo by John M. Bennett (USA). John has been a fellow traveller, more like a guide, on the dusty trail for a long time. I always like to see what he has been up to. Cheryl also included a Bennett poem, and I am forever an avid fan:

 

The piece on the right is, I think, by Morlina Marina (Italy) - new to me also. Cheryl attracted fine submissions from Italy, including work by Bruno Cassaglia, Claudio Romeo, and Tiziana Baracchi.

 

 

What a thrill to have all this under the same cover! The zine includes this fantastic piece (above) by conceptual artist TIC TAC (Germany) with more of her thought-provoking and completely distinctive, reality-bending pieces including, yes, a TIC TAC hole!

 

 

On the left is the other side of TIC TAC's page, and on the right is work by Roberto Keppler (Brazil), a fine visual  poet, asemic writer, and conceptualist, among other things.

 

 

Here is Tiziana Baracchi's contribution, solidly Fluxus and asemically inclined. 

 

 

I like Christine Tarantino's piece a great deal, and you can see more at her FLUX USA blog, which is a "must bookmark."

http://fluxusa.blogspot.com/

 

 

IUOMA staple Guido Vermeulen (Belgium) has been producing fantastic collages and poems lately at a dizzying pace. Cheryl's zine has reaped the benefits. Above is poem by Guido Vermeulen. Continued below:

 

 

 

And more:

 

 

I maintain all the greatest collage masters of the world are in Belgium, but that's just me.

 

 

Marie Wintzer (Japan) submitted some beautiful (but flaky) visual poetry and a sample of her poetry. 

 

Lesley Magwood Fraser, a vital member of Cheryl Penn's South African Correspondance School, gave this beautiful work to the zine.

Svenja Wahl's (Germany) stylized beasts are among my favs. I am an avid follower of her "Creature of the Month" postings. Additionally, I think she is an incredible collage artist, so I will treasure her zine contribution (above) for a very long time. 

 

 

And what would any project in mail-art be today were it not to include work by Katerina Nikoltsou (Greece)? 

 

 

I have participated in a number of projects with Skybridge Studios (USA) and maintain a fairly consistent correspondence with her. Part of the allure is the surprise. You never know what style or approach "Miss Lisa" might adopt on any given day. I think her zine page (above) provides a particularly fine example of a retro style she sometimes uses that references the Victorian or perhaps a turn of the 19th of the 20th century like, maybe, something out of Henry James. 

 

 

More Skybridge work can be seen on the left. I will conclude with a vispo fragment (right) by Nancy Bell Scott (USA). When considering the old question about what reading material you would take if you were to be marooned on a desert island, I would have to choose this first edition of Cheryl Penn's zine.

 

I believe the model Cheryl is using for this project is the Assembling Zine. Contributors prepare their own pages following guidelines. For instance, for a zine with an edition of 100, you would send 100 finished copies of your pages to the coordinator. The coordinator - no longer exactly in the traditional role of editor - then assembles and distributes the zine. If contributors are in geographic proximity, assembling would be a group effort and there might not be a coordinator, as in Cheryl's case there is.

 

Many assembling zines gather content through open calls, so selection is relatively egalitarian. Labor and cost are distributed in a way that seeks to be equitable and removes the need/danger of control by an individual or institution whose primary power is derived from access to capital. Rising postage costs, however, must surely be a challenge to this older model. 

 

Assembling zines are an established part of the mail-art network and akin to the add-and-pass concept. The form also seems to have roots in avant literary efforts of the 1960s. As a veteran of the Age of Zines, I have seen many of these in circulation and also others held in various archives and collections. They vary wildly in content and production quality. You can imagine Xerox or mimeo efforts.

 

For me, Cheryl's zine ranks very high among any I have ever seen in categories ranging from production quality to the range of artists represented. In addition to including many friends and contacts, it also provides a record of the state of mail-art as well as visual poetry at this moment in time. While many have concluded zines are obsolete in the Digital Age, Cheryl has modified the process and product so there is a digital component but also an art-poetic object.

All in all, stellar work by Cheryl that is deeply appreciated. For more, make sure to visit Cheryl Penn's blog:

http://cherylpenn.com/wpb/

 

MAIL-ART PSYCHIC

"No! I prefer MinXus!"

http://minxuslynxus2.wordpress.com/

 

[laurence gillot]

Bravo ! Ca donne envie de participer !

Bravo ! It makes you want to participate!

[De Villo Sloan]

Carina and others in the comment stream refer to the fact that Cheryl indeed has already produced 3 editions of the wondrous zine making her in my estimation The Zine Queen.

I have only touched on the first edition, a part representing the whole (to some degree). And of course an entire edition will be dedicated to Asemics - a fav of mine.

[cheryl penn]

I was going to ask if your Zine had arrived Claire - thanks for letting me know.  I was going to post my so-faar catalogue introduction, but have decided not to - thanks again De Villo :-) X

[Claire (aka Cleo)]

Really impressive! I cannot thank Cheryl enough for putting these zines together. A wondrous blog also DVS - thanks for sharing!

[De Villo Sloan]

Pie think therefore I Yam.

[De Villo Sloan]

You must be yolking! (Name a famous yolk slinger from Minnesota!) Don't carry all your eggs in the same basket.

[De Villo Sloan]

Fascinating commentary, Cheryl. I had hoped to generate some discussion on assembling zines now & then.

[Carina]

Thanks for blogging DVS. Wonderful pages/great inspiration! I received the editon III and it's always exposed on my working table..

[cheryl penn]

Hey De Villo (and correspondents)  - sorry about delay in getting to this great blog - Sundays as your know have all their minutes in full use :-).  As far as this publication goes, I am absolutely with Guido (Reiterated by yourself) - perhaps these Zines fall just outside the all-inclusive realm of general mail art in that a raise in quality in general has made the effort all worthwhile. Organizing, collection, assembly, addressing envelopes, photographing etc etc are VERY time-consuming - and if the work is poor it puts a real dampener on the process for me - the point is just to take care when sending with the realization that these efforts will HOPEFULLY not gather dust in a mail art storage box. 

They act on two levels - the book and mail art practice.  And the expense is most certainly a big factor - hence my request for good quality pages.  I think this sort of effort may die out for exactly the reasons you suggest - EXCEPT if contributors continue to inspire the organizers to continue the calls.  

It is interesting you use the term 'newsletters' - having viewed some of the Zines you mention, thats a good categorization. 

[De Villo Sloan]

This needs to move to M-L, but yes one Bunk House closet is stuffed with trashed scanners & blown-out hard drives. I warn anyone not to smear store brand US strawberry or grape jelly on your scanner bed. The dye they use is unbelievable. You can only imagine what it looks like inside you.