PEACE 2009

Two artistamps close 2009 with the theme of Peace. The stamp in the horizontal format is an update of a typographic design created in 2006. It shares the background color and Cascadia Artpost font with a second stamp in vertical format portraying the sockmonkey LoJack, dressed in a tunic decorated with peace emblems. Sockmonkeys are a popular folk art in parts of the United States that dates from the 1930's, made from socks stuffed in the image of a monkey. The most common sock is the red-heeled "Rockford" work sock manufactured by Fox River Mills (which bought out the former manufacturer, the Nelson Knitting Company) in Rockford, Illinois. The red heel gives the sockmonkey its distinctive red lips.

FLUXUS SEATTLE

The first black-and-white FluXus artistamp originated from a design by Wolfgang Feelisch in 1974 that was used by Ken Friedman in mail art exchanges, according to Chuck Welch's Eternal Network, A Mail Art Anthology (University of Calgary Press, 1995). The logo was quickly adapted and spread in the mail art network. Friedman used Feelisch's design along with an emblem for Fluxus Zone West by Joseph Beuys in a 1974 artistamp commemorative, and both designs were later copied for a Fluxus Postal Kit.

In this tradition, Cascadia Artpost produced its Fluxus Seattle artistamp in November 2009. Also designed and printed was a similar Fluxus Bellingham stamp for Rudi Rubberoid in Bellingham, Washington to facilitate exchanges in the Cascadia network.

Both the 1974 Fluxus West stamp and the Fluxus Seattle stamp are illustrated above.

GOOD MAIL DAY

Highly recommended by Cascadia Artpost for the bookshelf of every mail art creator or anyone curious about artistamps and postal art is a new softcover book by San Francisco artists Jennie Hinchcliff and Carolee Gilligan Wheeler, Good Mail Day (Quarry Books, 2009, $19.95 U.S.).

Filled with how-to pointers and abundantly illustrated, Good Mail Day brings together a lot of information in one place about mail art. The book's chapters cover topics such as:

• Getting started with mail art


• How to put together a traveling mail art kit


• Drawing ideas and raw materials from the environment around us


• How to make and illustrate envelopes


• Working with paper


• Postal experiments


• Creating artistamps


• Developing one's postal personality


• Mail art projects and networking

As added inspiration, bound with the book in the back are some blank postcards and postal stickers.

For more information, see the website http://www.good-mail-day.com. The artists also have a website for their Podpost at http://www.podpodpost.com.

FLUXUS II

The Fluxus movement - the word "Fluxus" means literally "to flow" - creates art directly from the world and invites the audience to participate directly in perception, cognition, and creation.

This second Fluxus commemoration by Cascadia Artpost was released on a "Fluxus Card" designed from an arithmetic flash card originally intended as a teaching tool for math lessons in grade school. The flash card was part of a set discovered in an antiques store in Edmonds, Washington in January 2009. The bendable figure shown on the artistamp is shown in an evening pose striding through some postcard trimmings on the Cascadia Artpost layout table.

STORMY SEASON 2009

Weather in the western portions of Cascadia (British Columbia, Oregon, and Washington) west of the Cascade mountain crest follows a distinctive annual pattern. Three-quarters of the precipitation falls in the six wettest months of the year, from the month of October through the month of March. Most of the time, proximity to the Pacific Ocean and the barrier of the Cascades shield Cascadia from frigid winter temperatures. Precipitation falls as rain in the lowlands and as snow above 3,000 feet elevation. Summers in Cascadia are very dry, matching the time when days are longest. Winters are exceptionally dark here much of the time as a consequence of heavy cloud cover and short daylight of the northern latitude, with briefing clearings marked by angular light. The tradoff of living in Cascadia is the very dry summer of long beautiful days.

An excellent illustrated survey explaining the weather of Cascadia is The Weather of the Pacific Northwest (University of Washington Press, 2008) by Cliff Mass, professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Washington and a frequent guest on local public radio station KUOW.

The break from summer is usually marked by an early storm, which can occur any time between early September and early October. This year, such a stormy period occurred on September 6-7. Cascadia Artpost tried to capture the essence of what we call the "Stormy Season" through a photo of stormy afternoon cumulus clouds boiling over Seattle, Washington.

ART CARS

The culture of the United States has been described by some as a "car culture." Unique in the world, the transportation infrastructure and urban form of the U.S.A. since the early 20th century has overwhelmingly been developed around a single mode, the private automobile. Owning and driving one's own car is a preoccupation of most teenagers here as a declaration of independence. In most metropolitan areas of the U.S., only 10% of all households do not have at least one car available. Advertising to induce new car purchases is incessant on commercial television. Dependence upon the car for individualistic mobility by most Americans is a given. The most popular weekly program on National Public Radio stations is a show called "Car Talk." So embedded is the automobile in the American psyche, one could characterize many Americans as car crazy.

Some people do not take their automobiles quite so seriously. They decorate their cars in imaginative color schemes and designs, sometimes affix figurines or toys to the bodies or dashboard, and often modify the original body into diverse forms such as a dragon, a telephone receiver, or a power boat. In 1974, a countercultural performance group named Ant Farm buried a set of big-finned Cadillacs nose-down in a field along Route 66 near Amarillo, Texas as a statement mocking "car culture." Nowadays, art cars do not seem so exceptional, but they still attract attention and comment. In the traffic congestion so prevalent in Seattle, it is always fun to see an art car on the street.

Cascadia Artpost honors the appearance of the art car in American life in the issuance of a sheet of 50 artistamps (only eight are shown here). The images appearing on the stamps were taken at the art car show held during the June 2008 Fremont Street Fair (Fremont is a city neighborhood in Seattle adjacent to the Ballard neighborhood that is the home of Cascadia Artpost), plus the Honda art car in the process of creation by my spouse. May you too enjoy these mobile images of artistic expression.

SORROWS OF EMPIRE SERIES:
OCCUPYING THE WORLD

Several years ago, while waiting at a bus stop across our city in the West Seattle neighborhood, we were simultaneously fascinated and shocked to see a large sign on the side of the American Legion Hall reading, “God Bless Our Troops, Thanks for Protecting the World.” A week later, we returned with a camera to document the sign. The sign is still there.

Shocked because of the blatancy of the expression of American exceptionalism, the underlying assumption being that the United States has a moral and divinely sanctioned right to occupy the world with over 700 military bases on the pretext of protecting the world’s peoples against… what, exactly?

Fascinated because so seldom do most Americans question why the United States has a larger military budget than the next 25 countries combined, or see this global military presence as anything other than a natural extension of military bases in Alaska and Hawaii, let alone as the enforcer of a global empire. The great American theologian Reinhold Niebuhr criticized “our dreams for managing history” as doomed to failure. Andrew Bacevich, in his 2008 book The Limits of Power, The End of American Exceptionalism, cites a widespread sense of entitlement for maintaining the American way for life, founded on material consumption and individual autonomy. The sorrow is the futility of this pursuit: militarily impossible, politically threatening to democratic institutions, and economically untenable. Yet, to question these premises is to be exiled outside the boundaries of allowable political discourse in the United States. What political commentator Tom Englehardt calls “the language of empire” works to undermine any attempt at discourse.

However, reality is conspiring to erode the ability of American political elites to continue the course. The global economic crisis and the disappearance of trillions of dollars of wealth are raising the specter of national financial ruin and accelerated economic decline.

Can we begin to see the world and define our own possibilities differently? The first step is to truly see differently what we so easily have taken for granted. In believing we are capable of doing so lies hope. That’s what this artistamp seeks to do.