Category Archives: Mail Art

Stencil letters and postcards

You might remember that a while back I stenciled these about to be discarded T-shirts with these super-deep messages?

As an update, they are doing fine and they seem to be enjoying their new lives as cultural icons. But that’s not what I wanted to talk about, really.

What I meant to say was something simpler. I had some cut out cardboard postcards on my work table as I was painting and I smeared them with leftover paint, as is my habit. There they languished until the stencils came along. I took the opportunity to use them on the painted backgrounds, no meaning, no rhyme or reason, just letter shapes. Here are a couple of the resulting postcards.

Postcard – Lady and Bird

I made this postcard in July, 2022, to submit to the Compassion event at the American Visionary Museum. Take a look here if you want to know what I am talking about. The cards will be on display in the Sideshow (the shop at the museum) and then for sale starting in September with all proceeds going to the museum.

Tiny Lion

I made this postcard in April, 2022, for my granddaughter. Her name is Leona, and that means “lion”, and a cat is a tiny lion, right? Just like her.

I think the cat and mouse in this picture are just meeting, and they will become friends.

I did this image in India ink, and acrylic markers, and a little bit of pen, I think – on a watercolor postcard.

Etegami (sort of) Three

I made a few postcards in April, 2022, inspired by a class I was taking at the time that compared Eastern and Western art. I was thinking of the scrolls I had seen in class that contained poetry and artwork.

I drew on the tradition of etegami to guide me, doing a loose interpretation by illustrating a haiku (written by me) rather than including a simple phrase, but I stuck with the idea of mail art, spontaneous art work, and something pleasant that a person would like to receive in the mail.

This is the third and last postcard I made in this small series.

I used India ink and a bamboo brush, and I painted the colors with gouache. It’s done on a watercolor paper postcard.