Stamps’n’Stuff: Postage Stamp Art
When the studio is dark and cold I work on projects less gooey than oil painting. One year it was Mattress Art. This year it is stamps.
As I have noted elsewhere, Mail Art, correspondence, collage, handmade books— have intrigued me since long before the web. And, I connect my webish interest and exploits with these trends and traditions. When I started using facebook, the tie to networked art was apparent.
Stamp Art : Damaged
Awhile back I rescued a box with the old family stamp collection. This winter I opened the box. I suppose sorting hundreds, maybe thousands of little pictures, is an obsessive compulsive indulgence that is more healthful than some potential addictions. Sorting led to composing.
Collage and doodles are scattered through my journal pages and early correspondence, as some old friends may recall. So, this particular obsessive phase falls in a continuity. It is an extension of a tradition. And, of course, since I started using the web I periodically e-mail and post electronic cards, bits and mini’s. I see a web page as collage, correspondence, bit.
The Aleph-Bet paintings overlapped with my indulgence in digital. The series was one of the first things I made a digital print with, and along with all thumbnails, made me think of postage stamps.
Postal services, run and regulated by governments, are complicit with traditional mail art. With internet and web government gives way to commercial interests. Actually commercial extensions are common to mail services.
I have been told that the Heifetz family ran a post in the Ukraine. I don’t know if it is true. It doesn’t matter The relevant idea is that, yet again, my projects, constructions and iconcepts tie in with an imagined or real ancestry. This might be called something like codes, cards, stamps of the ancestors. Here is an embrace of the imitate, the mundane, the non-spectacle, personal– not uncommon in miniature works. It is an inclusion of the trite , the reproducible, the folk, the non-establishment, tied to making contact in little ways with common material.
If you are not familiar with modern and contemporary art traditions some key words are: networked art, net art, mail art, artists books, artistamp, collage, assemblage, dada, fluxus, quilts, textile, fiber art, and I guess, di-fi. Some people position some of these trends in art as, “low art” or “anti-art” I see this as an understandable bit of nonsense. Calling these genera and traditions “anti” or “low” is an endorsement of the status quo European idea of art to begin with. I find it useful to recognize as historic but reject as current, an out-of-date mono-cultural perspective. The relevant idea is that, yet again, my projects, constructions and ideas tie together and interrelate.
I am completely comfortable, and at this point clearly qualified, to say that different media and genres can and do coexist. One does not need to out-do, or wipe out, all others. Painting and Net Art are not in compitition. Genres, traditions and cultures often travel different tracks. Genres traditions and cultures can and do relate, interact, communicate, mix and match in individual units and as groups. It is not an anomaly that an understanding of what art is, how it is constructed and how it functions is parallel to an understanding of a cultural or social reality.
If anyone wants to send me old postage stamps I will do something with them. If you tell me something about your self, this can influence how I construct a piece. Be sure to include your return address and I will send a special reply.
Wendy Angel: Actual Art
PO Box 221594, Carmel. CA, 93922
