Tag Archives: stamps

Craft Sessions, Scrapbooks + Journals

Sort-ganizing Ephemera by Post (with Royal Dudes & the Muffs)

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Yup, i ramble on about items arrived by post and think you should hang out (i’ll make tea)

Opening a big santa sack of recent items by post including aerogrammes/ aerograms, passports, international driver’s licenses, documents, hotel letterhead, records (namechecking recent interview on Rice Field Records), postcards, etc from Nepal, Monaco, East German DDR, probably i dunno… Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, United Nations, others i don’t quite understand.

Also mail from Ukraine which allows mention of intrepid postal workers delivering despite war and displacement, + blabbity blah about guest coming to visit, feeling discombobulated after #MECFS “crash  mode” – that’s it except the parts i forgot. Argh prob a ramble about the “passport forgery project” {recalling i riffed about taking “intimate documents” and adding life to them}

Bonus: Rice Field Records Interview

{this should and will be a separate bonus post but in the meanwhile…}

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Post'd (cards + letters)

Postal services as neural networks #Ukraine

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From Ukraine to Japan, somehow. #Peace

The postal services of the world create a magnificent neural network of sorts – dispatches leaping across borders, bypassing squabbles and avoiding incidents // due to creative time-tested systems and intrepid workers.

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Craft Sessions, Scrapbooks + Journals

Postal Art cards hang out (in kura barn with Bill Janovitz tunes)

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Just remixing some passports from Romania and Albania.

Ambient views and vibes of making a series of 4 very different postcards ~ fiddling with stamps (postal and inky), various pens, scissors, glue and other crafts odds and ends in kura barn in provincial Japan

Stamps and items from: Gibraltar, Malaysia, Diego Garcia, Nepal, Palau, Tuvalu, Japan, Tahiti, Antigua, Sri Lanka, India, BOIT, Newfoundland, CCCP, Canada, UK, & featuring Fredrick Varley, Ichiro Olson, Baden-Powell, Capilano suspension bridge, rabbits and many other notable details and destinations.

No chit-chat or narration, just hanging out.while listening to Bill Janovitz’s great album Walt Whitman Mall (used w/o clearence) on vinyl with admiration.

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Craft Sessions, Scrapbooks + Journals

Forging Passports, so to speak (“life during wartime”)

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Just remixing some passports from Romania and Albania.

Remixing expired passports from Romania and Albania into “dossiers of mystery and tactical intrigue” complete with endorsements, visas, assignments, sightings, safe houses, maps, aliases, poetry, ephemera, snippets, stamps – both ink and postal – musings, memos, codes, secrets.

Completely usual behavior – carry on with your diligent efforts.

Checkpoints include: Sri Lanka, Nepal, Diego Garcia, Vatican, Athens, Kyoto… etc + green beavers and diligent dogs

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Craft Sessions

Assembling Kerouac Dossiers and Poetic Letters, in the Kura #video

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Assembling Jack Kerouac ephemera dossiers and stamping postcards, scribbling letters while chatting, grouching about misplacing things and listening to REM’s “Fables of the Reconstruction.”

many items, carefully curated, into envelopes (with splendid stamps of course)

Hang out, no big deal.

PS Wanna get some artifacts for your archive and amusement? Be sure to watch the “Kerouac in Kobe” video to the end.

Bonus from Simon Warner, author of “text, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll” and writer/curator of highly recommended “Rock and the Beat Generation” newsletter, who says:

Thank you, Dave Olson, for sharing such a great selection of Kerouac in Kobe 2020/2021 exhibition artefacts: what a wonderful gathering of programmes and images, text, recordings and postcards!

Look out for an interview at Rock and the Beat Generation with the Canadian bodhisattva of Japanese Beat very soon
Simon Warner shares the assortment of Kerouac in Kobe artefacts / which arrived to UK in about a week from Japan, hooray for postal services!
it’s not always easy, but I keep on trying one way or another.

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Japan Cottage Musings, Japan Life/Travel

Charcoal, Poetry & Postal + topics of varied interest

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it’s cardigan season so let’s discuss a bonanza of topics, shall we?

While the industrious senior ladies are cleaning the house, I fire up a machine to tell you about the following items:

several pleasing items
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Post'd (cards + letters)

Post’d: well-franked from Wales, Portugal and Gifu + India returned

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Quite an assortment in the Post box yesterday:

that right there is a beautiful quartet

1) postcard of painting of a postbox from Wales with a commemorative Queen Elizabeth 2 Memorial franking & 3 language Air Mail seal

2) postcard from a dear correspondent in Gifu who’s postmaster always does a fantastic cancellation stamp (subject matter: motels around the world)

3) big envelope with collage art from Portugal with a fantastic oversize 4£ portfolio style stamp

4) a postcard i mailed to India that sadly, was returned because “mail to this region is not currently possible“ – keeping it on standby in the meanwhile

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Post'd (cards + letters)

Dossier: meet Rasika, postcard artist in Sri Lanka (also ink stamp and videos)

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in bed, making postcards with tea in Sri Lanka

While in Sri Lanka for extended Ayurveda treatment, and later rambling a bit, I met an earnest young artist named Rasika specializing in postcards, diligently hand-painted and reflecting visual motifs of his culturally unique homeland.

a variety of Rasika’s handmade postcards

I, unsurprisingly, purchased many many postcards from him and struck up a friendship. He would come to my villa to work on paintings and I would sometimes visit him at his stand at the market in historic Fort Galle.

Rasika and his pals and me, (top left) at villa, (top right) in tuk tuk, (bottom) at market

I mailed many of his postcards around the world so hope his spirit lives on refrigerators and in shoeboxes and scrapbooks as well as in hearts.

Rasika’s card (along one from Stick no Bills) on a fridge in Utah

I purchased him a special ink stamp as a token of friendship and he also help me acquire a return address stamp.

stamps for Rasika and my short-lived address
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Post'd (cards + letters)

Still Life: writing letters at Sun Clinic

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A sunny patch of grass, all necessary tools, everything is possible

Came across this photo, I suppose there’s a chance it’s elsewhere in this archive but its significant memory for me… ergo:

When we were pregnant, went to the lovely “and clinic” for our usual check-in but, in those early heady days of the “notable public health conundrum virus” this was the first time I was not allowed in to participate due to uncertainty and concern.

Certainly crestfallen so, as I do when feeling blue, I grabbed my postal kit and wrote a postcard or a letter, possibly to you.

These sorts of photos with pens, papers, address book, inky and postal stamps, aerograms, ephemera, postcards etc, all sort of spread around on a table, desk, blanket (or just the flap of a leather satchel purchased in Nepal), I called “postal still life” and yes, I have dozens of examples, 100s possibly.

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Collections of Artifacts, Post'd (cards + letters)

Items: Sabine & Griffin postcard originals by Nick Bantock

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From Sabine in London, to Griffin in Alexandria (along with stamps designed by Sabine from her “island home”)

Two original postcard backs from Griffin and Sabine series, part 2 “Sabine’s Notebook” are now in my archive along with the stamps used in the epistolary literature masterwork by Nick Bantock.

To Sabine from Griffin, Par Avion from Kyoto (along with Mr. Bantock’s Moo card)

Really great artifacts as the esteemed author/artist selected specific locations and topics for me. Of course, there are a few other related items throughout this archive if you’re curious.

Do you know these books? I hope so.

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