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Open call for artists, Mail Art: E17.
Mail art work by György Galántai, 1981
This is an open call for mail art from around the UK and the world.
Mail Art: E17 is the first stop on a moving exhibition of mail art from artists and illustrators across the globe, housed on this leg at Walthamstow Wine Club in Walthamstow, E17, London. I am curating the exhibition in E17* and looking for curators for future exhibitions.
I am seeking art on any subject and in any form with the one stipulation that the art relates to a mailable or mailed form. For example, that could be art on jiffy bags, envelopes, brown paper, packages, art using stamps, printed or franked labels, mail stickers, stencils or mail delivery cards. You can draw, paint, cut, stick and glue, cut-out, construct, scribble or print. Anything goes.
If you would like to take part in the exhibition please email me at mail[at]marielouiseplum.com or send your work directly the Mail Art:E17, c/o Walthamstow Wine, 56-60 Grove Road, London, E17 9BN. The deadline for submissions is ongoing, however for this leg of the exhibition artwork should be mailed through by April 2nd 2011. The exhibition opens this Wednesday 18th January with my mail art work, and, as more mail art submissions come in, will be added to.
Read more about the world-wide cultural movement of Mail Art here.
*The reason I am exhibiting the first leg in E17 is because it’s a vibrant, art-filled community full of lovely people who are well into lovely things! Check out Stowscene to learn more about us.
Mail Art stamp and envelope with official Colt Anniversary postmark – Chuck Welch, aka Cracker Jack Kid, 1984
Mail Art Nyíracsad Hungary 2012
images taken from 1st International Mail Art Exhibition
I’ve got some news for you good folks!
Next year I will be taking part in the 2nd International Mail Art exhibition at the Than Mór Mail Art
Museum, Nyiracsad, Hungary, organised by the local government of Nyíracsád and Ligetalja Tourist Association.
Lovely Cut-Click have scooped together all the work I did for them in a previous mail art exhibition which toured around the UK and I will be sending this off with a new batch of work.
This will be the final resting place of my mail art work as I have donated it to the Than Mór Museum. It will stay on exhibition there, rotating with other peoples work every 2-3 months.
The deadline for work is April 2012, so I am assuming that the exhibition will start in May/June. I will post up more news on this as soon as I have it.
Illustration up for Garden Media Guild Award 2011
Bit of a strange one for me, a few months ago I helped design and illustrated a booklet relating to children’s play areas in stately homes and public places. I’ve just found out that we (me and the author) are up for a GMG Award in the New Talent category. Fingers crossed everyone, if we win we are treated to a slap-up meal at a posh awards ceremony.
Here is the work again…
#SMHAFF Comic Workshop, Edinburgh.
It’s a relief it’s over. Only because I thought I would be rubbish at conducting the workshop. But as it turns out it went really blooming well.
On Saturday 8th October I ran a workshop as part of the Scottish Mental Health Art and Film Festival in Edinburgh. The workshop was predominantly for mental health service users, however anyone was invited to take part. After a brief (and very nervous) ramble about who I am and what I do, I led the class in an illustration workshop. And boy, did they work hard. Three solid hours of drawing!
The idea behind the workshop is to illustrate a day in the life of a mental health service user. It doesn’t have to be a generic day, and it doesn’t have to involve waking up and getting dressed…it doesn’t have to be literal. I wanted it to be a memory, or a feeling, it could be an abstract piece of work that does not stick to the lines of the comic strip. It can be colours or words or shapes. Or it can just be a stickman and it can just be a boring day. It’s about what you feel, how you feel being a mental health service user. And a person.
I took a whole load of materials up from London (in the heaviest bag known to man) so everyone could have a go using different pens, inks and paints. As well as a massive stash of pencil crayons and brush pens the artists got to try out dip pens, acrylic inks, marker pens, charcoal and pastel crayons as well as using mixed media such as collage.
Ultimately I would like to publish a graphic novel of collected strips from mental health service users. If this is something you would like to be involved in, please get in touch.
Some photos of what we completed at the workshop follow. If you would like to see all the photos from the day, including some of the exhibitions installed at the same venue, please click here and scroll through pictures to the right.
Scottish Mental Health Art & Film Festival
I am massively excited to announce that I will be working in Edinburgh this weekend for the Scottish Mental Health Art & Film Festival. If you’re about and you fancy it, and especially so if you are a mental health service user, I will be conducting a cartooning (in the loosest possible sense) workshop at North Edinburgh Arts (details below).
The workshop is free but places are going fast so if you do want to book, book now! All artists will have to option to display their work in the Festival exhibition and included in a large illustrated book produced by my arts in mental health organisation, Mental Spaghetti.
The workshop will focus on drawing a comic strip of ‘A day in your life’. Artists (no artistic experience necessary) will have the opportunity to work with lots of different pens, inks, paints and styles of drawing. The comic strip does not have to be a literal day in your life, it can be a feeling, an expression of a particular time, or maybe even no time in particular. You can always do a stickman cartoon too. Anything goes. The important thing is you get to have fun, create, and learn something new.
If you would like to take part please book now by clicking this link.
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A DAY IN THE LIFE: CARTOONING WORKSHOP
Edinburgh & Lothian
Workshop
Working with artist Marie-Louise Plum, you will create your own cartoon strip of a day in your life featuring what you think matters. All cartooners will have the opportunity for their strip to be exhibited in the exhibition and/or included in a book. No artistic experience required.
Venue Information
North Edinburgh Arts, 15a Pennywell Court, Edinburgh, EH4 4TZ
Event Information
Sat 8th
Free
Booking required – Telephone Kirsten at CAPS on 0131 538 7177 or kirsten@capsadvocacy.org
11am – 2pm
North Edinburgh Arts, 15a Pennywell Court, Edinburgh, EH4 4TZ
Images from HAPPYLAND.
Finally I have my act in gear and have a few photos to share with you from my recent exhibition.
For a full catalogue of images from the exhibition, please click on HAPPYLAND in the site menu.
Celebrities Eating Slowly.
Totally weird thing that someone made of me eating a clown. Obviously, I love it.
Happyland at Postcards Festival.
Finally, after months holed up in my oddball attic, painting whiskers on old clowns and talons on dirty kittens I have finished my collection of work, called Happyland, to be exhibited at Postcards Festival.
Postcards Festival is at Jacksons Lane theatre, Highgate, London. It is a summer festival featuring the “hottest talent in circus, cabaret and performance”. There will be site-specific performance, triple bills, one-nighters and special guests. My work will be nestled in amongst the performers and cabaret; I have the run of the building where art space is concerned and have created an exhibition that lives within the nooks and crannies at Jacksons Lane.
Happyland is a vast collection of 3D objects, masks, appropriated items, pen and ink portraits and customised museum boxes. Come and meet brain-eating slug men, jolly, headless ballerinas and a schizophrenic jamboree of clown folk with dubious intentions.
Best viewed through a child’s eyes. Don’t be frightened…nothing is real.
Happyland will stay up at Jackson’s Lane until the end of August.
It’s nearly here folks!
Okay, so here is the third and most probably final lo-res (i.e. crap quality) sneak peak of what makes up Happyland. Next week I will reveal the brochure for Postcards Festival, the festival I am artist in residence at. Plenty circus, plenty freak, lots of fun and interesting things for you to get stuck into. So, remember to check back for all the details next week!
