Welcome to Cascadia Artpost

FAVORITE BOOKS

2012-01-22T17:01:00.000-08:00

What are your favorite books? In conjunction with the Flux Libris artistamp release, Cascadia Artpost presents a set of twelve artistamps representing more favorite books discovered over the past several years. Despite the advent of new electronic media, we think books will remain a significant medium of human communication.

Here are brief descriptions of the twelve favorite books, in order from left to right on the artistamp sheet:

Books, Boxes & Wraps by Marilyn Webberley and JoAn Forsyth (1998) is a handy and comprehensive resource of book arts skills and projects that we discovered in a book binding class last fall. With many hand-drawn illustrations, this book covers book binding tools, leaves and scrolls, accordion bindings, sewn bindings, single signature bindings, multiple signature bindings, folders and wraps, and how to make boxes and cases.

The Museum of Innocence by Orhan Pamuk (2010) is a novel of romance set in the author's Istanbul, Turkey. Kemal, the main protagonist and narrator, is engaged to be married to Sibel, but when he meets Füsun, a beautiful shopgirl and distant relation, he becomes enthralled. Over the next eight years, he becomes a compulsive collector of objects that chronicle his relationship with Füsun, a museum that maps both society and his heart. The author even appears as a character in his own novel (page 124)!

The Map as Art, Contemporary Arts Explore Cartography by Katherine Harmon (2009), is a beautifully illustrated collection over over 350 map-related artistic visions that are as much explorations of the interior mind as they are of exterior landscapes. In-depth essays explore the works of Joyce Kozloff, Landon Mackenzie, Ingrid Calame, Guillermo Kuitca, and Maya Lin.

Railroaded, The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America by the Stanford University history professor Richard White (2011), presents a new interpretation of the impacts of the transcontinental railroads as the first corporate behemoths in the United States. White dissects industrialization in the so-called Gilded Age, the financial schemes that supported the expansion of rail, early organized labor movements of the American working class, and how the capitalist moguls in the second half of the 19th century and early 20th century initiated new forms of corruption on Wall Street and among politicians national and local to get their way. White makes unsettling comparisons with the troubles brought on by the financial sector in our own time.

The Lomholt Mail Art Archive edited by by Niels Peter Lomholt and Lene Aagaard Denhart (2011) is a large (640 pages) volume filled with color illustrations from Niels Momholt's extensive collection of works, letters, and personal encounters with mail artists from Al Ackerman to David Zack in 1971-85, works by the Lomholt Formular Press between 1975 and 1985, and documentation of Lomholt's video work between 1971 and 2006.

A Question of Values by cultural historian Morris Berman (2010) presents wide-ranging essays previously unpublished in the United States on American culture and politics, the human existential condition, and the notion of progress. Berman challenges readers to rethink the accepted mainstream of values and the American culture of material consumption, and argues that current problems are as much ethical as political. The essays are organized in four parts: Lament for America, Mind and Body, Progress True and False, and Quo Vadis. Their wide range is revealed by the titles, such as "To See Ourselves as We Are Seen," "The Black Hole of Bethesda," "Ways of Knowing," "The Hula Hoop Theory of History," "Tribal Consciousness and Enlightenment Tradition." Most of the essays were originally published in Spanish. Berman currently lives in Mexico.

Why America Failed, also by Morris Berman (2012), is intended as a post-mortem examination of the U.S. in decline as a world empire. Berman examines American culture from the time of the first English colonies to the present, and makes the case that the elements of the American "hustler" culture were present from the very beginning, guiding American expansion as a continental and then global empire and now American decline. He asserts that hustling, materialism, and the pursuit of individual gain without regard for impacts on others have been powerful forces that have overwhelming contravailing visions.

The Dictionary of Imaginary Places by Alberto Manguel and Gianni Guadalupi (2000) catalogs the imaginary places invented by literature. Like a literary travel guide, this book is a pleasure to browse, its descriptions enhanced by abundant illustrations of maps, structures, artifacts and other details of imaginary geography.

Good Mail Day, A Primer for Making Eye-Popping Postal Art, by Jennie Hinchcliff and Carolee Gilligan Wheeler (2009), is a colorfully illustrated guide to making mail art. Good Mail Day covers mail art etiquette, assembling a mail art kit for travel, how to make and illustrate envelopes, designing and reproducing artistamps, penmanship, finding correspondents with whom to exchange in the mail, developing one's "postal personality," and starting mail art projects. Included in the book are a list of resources, stickers, post cards, and an envelope template. This is a great resource and collection of ideas for those new to mail art as well as the seasoned mail art collaborator.

A Paradise Built in Hell, the Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster, by Rebecca Solnit (2009), recounts examples of altruism, resourcefulness, generosity, and community-building that arise in the aftermath of disasters. Solnit is one of our favorite writers who consistently presents a vision of life that is less authoritarian and fearful, and more hopeful, collaborative, and local.

Every War Has Two Losers by the late Cascadian poet William Stafford (2003) is a less well known collection of daily writings from journals, essays, and poems on peace and war. A conscientious objector during World War II, Stafford believed that there were more options than simply fighting or running away. This volume is timeless in its relevance.

Fuel, Poems by Naomi Shihab Nye (1998), is one of the fine collections of poetry by this Palestinian American poet. Here is an example:

I Still Have Everything You Gave Me

It is dusty on the edges.

Slightly rotten.

I guard it without thinking.

Focus on it once a year

when I shake it out in the wind.

I do not ache.

I would not trade.

FLUX LIBRIS

2012-01-22T16:49:00.000-08:00

The idea of Flux Libris began with a December 2011 letter enclosed along with a sheet of artistamps from Seattle artist Carl Chew, who invited Cascadia Artpost and other mail artists to produce a work for the "Ex Libris" exhibition of book plates at the Davidson Galleries in the Pioneer Square neighborhood of Seattle. The exhibition is showing during the month of January. Despite the short notice, we quickly designed an artistamp based on the New Fluxus Symbol Set 1-B as the subject to commemorate the gallery exhibition and more than 50 years of the Fluxus attitude.

New Fluxus Symbol Set 1-B first appeared on September 6, 2006 as "clip art for everyone" posted by Allen Bukoff on the Fluxlist Blog, which can be found here:

http://fluxlist.blogspot.com/2006/09/new-fluxus-symbols-clip-art-for.html

If you click on each image, a link will take you to the origin of the image.

A live performance on September 30, 2006 features Allen Bukoff who creates an artistamp sheet with rubber stamps printing each image of the New Fluxus Symbol Set 1-B, and can be found here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2mXh0n5q1k

NEW YEAR 2012

2012-01-22T16:39:00.000-08:00

Cascadia Artpost welcomes the new year 2012 with an artistamp of suspended holiday balls against a stylized background of bluish dots that could be seen as snowflakes. The design is an update of last year's artistamp. We liked the design so much that we used it again.

May the year 2012 bring you good health, supportive and loving people in your life with whom to share and create, and new inspirations.

AÑO NUEVO 2012
Cascadia Artpost acoge con satisfacción el nuevo año 2012 con una artistamp
de las bolas de vacaciones suspendidas sobre un fondo estilizado de puntos azules
que se podía ver como los copos de nieve. El diseño es una actualización de artistamp del año pasado. Nos gustó el diseño tanto que se utiliza de nuevo.

De mayo del año 2012 traerá una buena salud, las personas de apoyo y
de amor en tu vida con quien compartir y crear, y nuevas inspiraciones.

ANO NOVO 2012
Cascadia Artpost saúda o novo ano 2012 com um artistamp de bolas de férias
suspensos contra um fundo estilizado de pontos azulados que poderia ser visto como flocos
de neve. O projeto é uma atualização de artistamp do ano passado. Gostamos do projeto
tanto que usamos-lo novamente.

Que o ano de 2012 lhe trazer boa saúde, pessoas de apoio e de amor em sua vida com
quem compartilhar e criar, e novas inspirações.

NOUVEL AN 2012
Cascadia Artpost se félicite de la nouvelle année 2012 avec une artistamp de boules
de vacances avec sursis contre un fond stylisé de points bleutés qui pourraient être considérés comme des flocons de neige.
Le design est une mise à jour de artistamp l'an dernier. Nous avons aimé le design autant que
nous l'avons utilisé à nouveau.

Que l'année 2012 vous apporter une bonne santé, les personnes de soutien et d'amour dans votre vie avec qui partager et de créer, et de nouvelles inspirations.

Yeni Yıl 2012
Cascadia Artpost, kartaneleri gibi görülebilir mavimsi nokta stilize
edilmiş bir arka plana karşı askıya tatil topları artistamp yeni yıl 2012 ağırlamaktadır.

Tasarım, geçen yılki artistamp bir güncelleme. Biz, o
kadar çok tekrar kullanılan tasarım sevdim.

2012 yılı size sağlık, hayatınızı paylaşmak ve oluşturmak için kiminle destekleyici ve
sevgi dolu bir insan ve yeni ilham getirebilir.

NEU JAHR 2012
Cascadia artpost begrüßt das neue Jahr 2012 mit einem Artistamp
suspendierter Urlaub Bälle gegen einen ansprechenden Hintergrund bläulichen Punkte,
die wie Schneeflocken zu sehen war. Das Design ist ein Update der letztjährigen Artistamp. Uns gefiel das Design so sehr, dass wir es wieder verwendet werden.

Möge das Jahr 2012 bringen Ihnen gute Gesundheit, unterstützende und liebevolle Menschen
in Ihrem Leben, mit denen zu teilen und zu schaffen und neue Inspirationen.

JAUNAIS GADS 2012
Cascadia Artpost atzinīgi vērtē jauno gadu 2012 ar artistamp suspendēto brīvdienu
bumbiņas pret stilizētu fona zilgani punkti, var uzskatīt par snowflakes.Dizains
ir update pagājušā gada artistamp. Mums patika dizains tik ļoti, ka mēs izmantot to vēlreiz.

Maijs 2012 sniegs jums labu veselību, atbalstošu un mīlošiem cilvēkiem savā dzīvē, ar ko dalīties
un veidot, un jaunu iedvesmu.

ÚJ ÉV 2012
Cascadia Artpost üdvözli az új 2012-es év egy artistamp felfüggesztett nyaralás golyók ellen, stilizált háttér kékes pöttyök, hogy lehet tekinteni hópelyhek. A design egy frissítést
a tavalyi artistamp. Mi tetszett a design annyira, hogy használható újra.

Május 2012-hoz ön jó egészséget, támogató és szerető emberek az életedben, akivel megosztani, és
hozzon létre, és az új inspirációk.

НОВИЙ РІК 2012
Cascadia Artpost вітає новий 2012 з artistamp зважених куль святом проти
стилізованих тлі блакитного точок, які можна розглядати
як сніжинки. Дизайн оновлення artistamp минулого року. Нам
сподобався дизайн настільки, що ми використовували його знову.

Травень 2012 принесе Вам міцного здоров'я, підтримки і люблячі люди у вашому
житті, з ким ділитися і створювати, і нових натхнень.

Flux Kit

2011-01-02T21:39:00.000-08:00

The first Cascadia Artpost artistamps of 2011, Flux Kit is a set of ten stamps with provocative short slang and sayings. Some of them are what the British would term "snarky." Others are simply rhetorical satire or reversed derivatives of hackneyed phrases, as for example "As NOT Seen on TV" is a contradiction of the tiresome commercial phrase "As Seen on TV" promoting products on American television. Taken together as a set, the Flux Kit is ready to play in the mails. Who knows, we might exercise our "Franking Privilege" and conceive additional artistamps later in 2011 to add to the Flux Kit.

New Year 2011

2011-01-02T21:35:00.000-08:00

Cascadia Artpost sends New Year's greetings and best wishes everywhere for 2011. This year's New Year artistamp portrays a group of hanging holiday ornamental balls against a snowy background. Both the background and the balls were composed using Corel Draw graphics software. A holiday greeting in multiple languages to mail art friends appears in the selvage of the artistamp sheet.

CLIFF LEE

2011-01-02T21:29:00.000-08:00

This quickly composed artistamp commemorates the December signing of free agent pitcher Cliff Lee by the Philadelphia Phillies, a U.S. professional baseball team in the National League. The signing provides a competitive edge for the Phillies going into the 2011 baseball season, since Lee joins an already formidable pitching staff of Roy Halladay, Roy Oswalt, and Cole Hamels. We were born in a Pennsylvania city near Philadelphia, and so have always been a fan of the Phillies team even while living far away in Cascadia. How exciting to look forward to another championship season by our favorite baseball team!

70 Years of Electric Trolley Buses in Seattle (1940 - 2010)

2010-11-21T14:57:00.000-08:00

Electric trolley buses have been part of the public transport system of the city of Seattle since 1940. Originally introduced to replace streetcars, trolley buses take advantage of the hydroelectric power available in the Pacific Northwest region of Cascadia. Electric power collection and return occurs by poles on the roof of the bus connecting with two overhead wires. Trolley buses provide quiet, no-emission operation that has excellent acceleration characteristics and hill-climbing ability. Besides the Seattle system, trolley buses also currently operate in: Boston, MA; Dayton, OH; Philadelphia, PA; San Francisco, CA; and Vancouver, BC Canada.

Cascada Artpost commemorates the 70 years of trolley bus operation in Seattle with a set of five artistamps, released with a descriptive booklet. The buses portrayed represent both the original coach types and the vehicles currently in service. The first trolley buses replaced streetcars in 1940, and the city procured additional trolley buses in 1943-44 for a total fleet of 307 trolley buses. We have taken some artistic liberties in posterizing the scenses of the World War II era Brill and Twin coaches - pink trolley buses never actually ran on the streets of Seattle!

Seattle Transit substituted diesel buses for a portion of the trolley bus network in 1963. A public vote consolidated public transport in Seattle and King County into a single system called Metro in 1973. The trolley bus system closed for two years in 1978 for rebuilding and expansion, with 110 new standard-size 40-foot trolley buses built by the now defunct American automotive manufacturer AM General starting service in 1979. In 1986, Metro added 46 high-capacity 60-foot articulated trolley buses built by the German manufacturer M-A-N to handle larger passenger loads.

As an alternative to purchasing new trolley buses, Metro (now part of King County government) decided to rebuild 100 trolley buses with salvaged electric traction systems in new bodies built by Gillig. These buses began service in 2002. A similar approach was taken in 2006-2008 when 60 articulated dual-power diesel electric coaches built by the Italian manufacturer Breda originally introduced in 1990 to operate in the downtown Seattle transit tunnel were converted to full electric operation.

Metro's entire trolley bus fleet is near the end of its useful life. A key decision is approaching on whether to replace the trolley buses with diesel-electric hybrid buses by 2014. This decision occurs in the context of a Metro budget crisis where there is great pressure to reduce expenses. Will decision-makers succumb to the temptation to abandon the trolley bus system in favor of less expensive diesel buses? With the peaking of global petroleum production and the vulnerability of the United States to petroleum price hikes and spot fuel shortages in the years ahead, a decision to purchase buses powered by fossil fuel could prove shortsighted and foolhardy. Metro's purchase of a new electric trolley bus fleet and possible expansion of its trolley network would increase Seattle's resilience to the challenges presented by peak oil.

Transmission on this frequency is now closing...

2010-07-11T16:33:00.000-07:00

Wayne Hom 1948 - 2010

On the evening of Wednesday, 26 May, I received an email from friend and former co-worker Wayne Hom, sharing his news that he had been diagnosed with liver cancer. I telephoned him immediately, and he spoke as if he did not expect to live very much longer. We arranged for me to stop by his residence for a visit on the following Saturday.

I spent the rest of the week trying to grasp this news. Wayne had been a senior scheduler at King County Metro Transit for many years, and I considered him a valued colleague in the planning of changes to public bus service in the Seattle metropolitan area as well as a close friend.

When Saturday arrived, I took several buses to reach Wayne's house and on the way stopped at a Mexican restaurant to pick up lunch for us to share. I arrived just before 2:00 p.m., and for the next three hours we talked about everything, from the lastest developments at Metro to his medical condition and spiritual matters. Except for stiffness in his joints and feeling tired, Wayne was not in pain, and actually seemed in a good frame of mind. About his medical prognosis, he said with a smile, "That's life, everybody has to go sometime." His approach was to take each day and try to have the highest quality of life that he could manage. At the end of the afternoon, we talked about my visiting again in the next week. He shook my hand and thanked me for stopping by.

On 31 May, I learned from his sister-in-law that Wayne had passed away on Sunday morning, 30 May, with his family present. Yesterday, 10 July, the Hom family held a celebration of his life. At the celebration, I presented a framed sheet of an artistamp I created for Cascadia Artpost to honor Wayne. The artistamp shows a picture of Wayne from his last trip to China, superimposed on a scene with a Metro Route 36 trolley bus serving his Beacon Hill neighborhood in Seattle. Wayne was a frequent observer of bus operations, so much so that we at Metro called Wayne "the Beacon Hill Observer." This was an appropriate monniker for the artistamp.

Wayne used a phrase on his telephone answering machine, "Transmission on this frequency is now closing ..." which mimicked the closing message from the BBC's shortwave radio Caribbean relay station. I'll always remember that message in thinking about him. Wayne was an excellent friend, a super competent transit scheduler, a perceptive observer of the world, a talented graphic artist and photographer. I'll miss him.

Peak Oil Day and Deepwater Horizon

2010-07-11T15:58:00.000-07:00

On 11 July 2008, the price of a barrel of oil reached a record $147.27 in international trading. The Post Carbon Institute has identified this day to symbolize the time when global peak oil production occurred. July 11th serves as a reminder to start adapting to a post-petroleum world. All three charts reproduced on Cascadia Artpost stamps are courtesy of TheOilDrum.com. The charts illustrate respectively the peaking of world energy sources, trends in population growth and oil production, and the decline of oil production in the continental United States as well as Alaska.

In 2010, the uncontrolled release of oil and menthane from the Deepwater Horizon well into the waters of the Gulf of Mexico is an environmental disaster of unparalleled dimensions. Reliance on high-risk methods such as deep-water drilling is a consequence of the peaking of global petroleum production. The photos of distressed waterfowl shown on Cascadia Artpost artistamps were taken by Charlie Riedel of the Associated Press off East Grand Terre Island on the Louisiana coast, while the photo of the blue-gloved hand and the oil-covered beach in the same locale appears courtesy of Greenpeace.

Will we learn any lessons from these events?

Invisible Exhibition

2010-06-19T12:40:00.000-07:00

Cascadia Artpost received an invitation from the Australian artist Aska requesting our participation in a global "Invisible Exhibition" by responding in some way to the enclosed photo of a portion of one of her paintings. Aska's artwork can be viewed at http://super-aska.daportfolio.com/.

The photograph was scanned and then edited in Adobe Photoshop Elements, then imported into Corel Draw X4 to design the artistamp. Four rounds of editing were necessary to produce color hues that were close to those in the photograph. Cascadia Artpost sent ten sheets of artistamps to the artist for her use.

The resulting artistamp calls attention to Aska's website, and is the first of an intended series of artistamps with the theme "Invisiible Exhibition" that will feature unusual and interesting graphic images.

If you have an unusual graphic image that you would like to see turned into stamp art, please send the image to Cascadia Artpost, 2649 NW 64th Street, Seattle, WA 98107-2456 U.S.A. Credit will be given to all contributors.

May Day

2010-06-19T12:32:00.000-07:00

In late April 2010, the computer available to Cascadia Artpost was in a repair shop to address a boot-up problem encountered in the course of upgrading to Windows 7. Since the computer was not going to be back in time for the May Day weekend, we decided to publish an artistamp by other means without use of a computer. This May Day artistamp was produced as a rubber stamp impression.

The red background was applied as a first step by using a solid rubber stamp block image fitting a 1 inch by 1 inch perforation. In the second step, the typography and symbols were composed as a small custom handstamp and individual impressions were made by hand to perforated sheets of 70 stamps. Given that each image was created individually, each artistamp had variations in the impressions.

The May Day stamp mailed on 1 May 2010 on a plain red card honors the day of working people everywhere.

Favorite Books

2010-06-19T11:58:00.000-07:00

In response to a mail art call sponsored by the Paint Rock River Valley Postal Authority, Cascadia Artpost created a block of four artistamps calling attention to favorite books. The call was for "favorite book," but who can point to just a single book and call it their favorite book? The artistamps were printed on February 26, 2010.

The aristamp designs are based on scans of four book covers.

A Pattern language by Christopher Alexander et al. is a unique handbook first published in 1977 and now has gone through 20 printings. Based on empirical observations that aim to identify a set of structural and spatial patterns of human buildings and communities that function well, sustain individuals psychologically, and appear inviting, this book is subversive to what architects have been doing the past 30 years. Nikos Salingaros calls A Pattern Language "one of the great books of the century." One could say any century.

A Glass Face in the Rain is a 1982 collection of poems by the late Cascadian poet William Stafford. Stafford's poems are often set in the western United States and contain a certain affirmation, confidence, and optimism that we find attractive even in the face of darkness. These poems embody the spirit of Cascadia.

The Brothers K by David James Duncan is a wonderful epic novel about the Chance family and set in the 1960's Vietnam War era. A coming of age tale about four brothers and twin sisters incorporates a number of interesting ingredients: baseball, fundamentalist Christianity, humor, and the response to circumstances that we personally lived through.

The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein is a critiqueof contemporary capitalism in the wake of wars, terrorist attacks, natural and human-made environmental disasters, and self-inflicted financial crises where the corporate state uses public disorientation to impose control through a mix of privatization, further deregulation, repression of unions and other opponents, reductions in social spending, and police/military repression. This all works, up to a point where reality overwhelms shock. The unfolding scope of degradation resulting from the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is a case in point.

2010-03-22T11:22:00.000-07:00

CASCADIA ARTPOST ADDRESS

Please note that the Cascadia Artpost Post Office Mailbox is now closed. All postings should be sent to the following address:

CASCADIA ARTPOST

2649 NW 64th Street

Seattle, WA 98107-2456

U.S.A.

2010-03-22T10:58:00.000-07:00

Spring in Cascadia

Spring is our favorite time of the year, and not just because this is the month of our birthday. This is the season of rebirth, of the new start. Spring is the season of hope. It is the time when gardens start to come alive. Here in Cascadia, our climate is moderate, so our transition of the seasons at this time of year is more gradual: longer days, enough warmth in the soil to cause seeds to sprout, more breaks in our cloudy weather regime. To celebrate Spring in Cascadia, Cascadia Artpost presents four artistamps illustrating flowers from last year's spring garden: Dicentra uniflora (common name: bleeding heart), Helleboras ericsmithii (common name: hellebore), Phlox paniculata (common name: phlox), and Crocus vernus (common name: crocus).

One of our favorite poets of Cascadia, the late William Stafford (1914-1993), more often was inspired by the other three seasons, but here is a poem of his fitting for spring. It is taken from the collection Learning to Live in the World, Earth Poems by William Stafford:

THE DREAM OF NOW

When you wake to the dream of now

from night and its other dream,

you carry day out of the dark

like a flame.

When spring comes north, and flowers

unfold from earth and its even sleep,

you lift summer on with your breath

lest it be lost ever so deep.

Your life you live by the light you find

and follow it on as well as you can,

carrying through darkness wherever you go

your one little fire that will start again.

~ William Stafford, 1991

Security Flap

2010-02-21T18:17:00.000-08:00

Security flaps have come to dominate U.S. media attention. We are a nation preoccupied with security. The latest attempt to ignite explosives on an airliner destined for the United States has precipitated another round of recriminations and ruminations about security. Commentators such as the scholar Chalmers Johnson say that this is the natural cycle of blowback, retaliations and counter retaliations to the American overstretch of maintaining an empire of a thousand military bases around the world. Cascadia Artpost calls attention to the latest Security Flap by reproducing the patterns found on "security envelopes" carrying mail art received during 2009. What does security mean for you?

PEACE 2009

2009-12-26T17:42:00.000-08:00

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

2009-12-26T17:22:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-11T12:43:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-11T11:19:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-11T10:53:00.000-08:00

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

2009-08-16T06:46:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-06-14T21:54:00.000-07:00

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.

S P R I N G 2009

2009-04-04T16:18:00.000-07:00

It is the spring season in Seattle, though in many respects April still seems like Winter In America. Seattle's weather has been five to ten degrees cooler than the average, with snow falling this past week on the morning of the second day of April. The economy of the United States continues to contract, with official unemployment climbing to 8.5% and General Motors teetering less than two months away from probable bankrupcy. Activities on the street seem to be going on as before, yet daily conversations tend to veer toward some topic of worry and concern.

But pay attention - there is still beauty to note in the world. Here in Cascadia, the Pacific Northwest region of North America in the Northern Hemisphere, the cherry tries are beginning their bloom, bulbs are poking out of the ground and breaking out in colorful flowers, and the days grow longer.

Cascadia Artpost commemorates this season by reproducing four scenes photographed from past springs. The two pictures of tulips were photographed in 2005 on the street outside my apartment. One year ago, I was walking with my camera down the street of our current residence in the Ballard neighborhood of Seattle (often I take a camera with me to document the environs as I walk) and noticed the childrens' chalk drawing on the pavement. Walking farther and crossing the street, I couldn't help but notice the accumulated flower petals in the gutter.

Seeing and perceiving shape our daily outlook on life. The Cascadian poet William Stafford (1914-1993) once wrote a poem about this:

Seeing and Perceiving

You learn to like the scene that everything

in passing loans to you - a crooked tree

syncopated upward branch by pre-

established branch, its pattern suddening

as you study it; or a piece of string

forwarding itself, that straight knot so free

you puzzle slowly at its form (you see

intricate but fail at simple); or a wing,

the lost birds trailing home.

These random pieces begin to dance at night

or when you look away. You cling to them

for form, the only way that it will come

to the fallible: little bits of light

reflected by the sympathy of sight.

F L U X U S

2009-02-01T20:27:00.000-08:00

GEORGE BRECHT, FLUXUS ARTIST
(1926 – 2008)

We were generally aware of the Fluxus movement during our university years in the 1960’s, through the music of John Cage and the works of artists like Claes Oldenberg. The name George Brecht only registered in our memory because his last name was easy to associate with the German playright Bertolt Brecht. Mr. Brecht, born George MacDiarmid, changed his last name while a soldier in the U.S. Army in Germany around 1945, because he liked the way Brecht sounded.

George Brecht again came to our attention in 2001 when we were delving into the history of artistamps and mail-art. The Fluxus movement – the word “Fluxus” means literally, “to flow” – created art directly from the world and invited the audience to participate directly in perception, cognition, and creation. Postal art and communication publicly through the international postal system became one expression of Fluxus, documented by Chuck Welch’s Eternal Network, A Mail Art Anthology (University of Calgary Press, 1995).

Although Brecht did produce some rubber stamps, we are not aware that he ever created any artistamps. Nonetheless, as a transportation planner we were fascinated with one of Brecht’s early works, Motor Vehicle Sundown (Event) to John Cage (1959), involving a gathering of a large number of disparate motor vehicles in a public space. As part of a retrospective of George Brecht’s work in September 2005, Museum Ludwig in Brecht’s hometown of Köln, Germany held a reenactment of Motor Vehicle Sundown in Köln’s central cathedral square with the artist present and directing traffic, so to speak. An eyewitness, Anna Dezeuze, described the experience:

“A crowd gathered, attracted by the unexpected grouping, but wandered rather aimlessly as the drivers of each vehicle performed such mundane activities as blowing horns, opening and closing doors, operating windscreen wipers and switching headlights on and off: there was no apparent order, no climax, no clear beginning or end. This was one of Brecht’s more Cagean works, and the simultaneity of the actions and large-scale organisation required to stage the performance are uncharacteristic of Brecht’s later, more minimal, work, but the deliberate sense of uncertainty is certainly one of Brecht’s most radical achievements.”
(Excerpted from Anna Dezeuze, “Brecht for beginners,” Papers of Surrealism, Issue 4, Winter 2005)

In Brecht’s own words, his art was a means of “ensuring that the details of everyday life, the random constellations of objects that surround us, stop going unnoticed.”

Brecht left the United States in 1965. After settling in Köln in 1972, he maintained a low profile until the Museum Ludwig’s George Brecht “Heterospective” in 2005 (the exhibition subsequently was moved in 2006 to Barcelona’s MACBA (Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona).

George Brecht died on December 5, 2008 in Köln. Cascadia Artpost honors Brecht’s life and work with a pair of artistamps. The orange posterization is based on a 1960 photo of Brecht taken by Scott Hyde, while the blue posterization features a scene with the artist at Museum Ludwig’s 2005 Heterospective, from a photo taken at the event by Pietro Pellini.

A note about the Fluxus postcard:

On a trip to an antiques store with spouse and a friend in early January, we made the unexpected finds of a set of arithmetic flash cards and game cards with an interesting arrow in a “shock wave” pattern. Turned on their sides, the flash cards become something more than mathematical functions. These found objects immediately became appropriate subjects for a Fluxus postcard. We’d like to think that George Brecht would have noticed.

P O E T R Y

2009-02-01T16:53:00.000-08:00

A Postcard in Memory of Donald Evans
~ Robert Farnsworth, The Missouri Review (Vol. 11, No.1, 1988)

Walking past a boatyard full of cradled sloops

last night, I thought of you. Yellow portholes

yielded the shoulders of somebody doing delicate

work, floating perhaps, above a coast he hopes

he will explore, or stilting his compass across

the pale deeps. Three just-varnished blocks

beaded a rope across the cockpit. In the flat

surrounding fields, luminous local vegetables

hide beneath dark leaves, and on the pier at

evening, thousands of red-needled sea urchins,

swung from a trawler's hold, pour loudly

into a truck. But the stolid, mumbling, upwind

flight of the blimp each morning most brings

you to mind - outward bound for Nadorp,

Iles des Sourds, Mangiare. Most of your countries

had just achieved independence, or had steadily

reclaimed themselves from cold ocean and sky.

They linger at the margins of our maps.

Cancelled on yellowed envelopes, or fixed

like stars to black collector sheets, tinctured

in the watercolor you said could not be labored,

their stamps commemorate our love of minor

beauties, perishable things. In the full panes

of your exotic issues, made of tiny, certain strokes

and pastel fogs, I recognize myself, the boy

who wanted everything arrayed, passed through

imagination's tender lens, orderly as the leaded

green and mustard meadows tilting on a wingtip,

where long archipelagos of shadows slowly drift.

INAUGURATION

2009-01-24T17:27:00.000-08:00

The Cascadia Artpost commemoration of Barack Obama’s inauguration as the 44th President of the United States brings together two iconic images to capture the contradictory impulses of the moment. In the background is a portion of the pop poster portrait of Obama drawn by Los Angeles street artist Shepard Fairey. Fairey’s image, variously captioned with “HOPE” and later “PROGRESS,” has spawned a number of parodies of other political and cultural figures, but nonetheless has become one of the icons of the 2008 political landscape. In the foreground, we overlaid our own drawing inspired by Edvard Munch’s “The Scream,” drawn in various versions by Munch between 1893 and 1910. Munch’s expressive image of manic anxiety captures perfectly the obverse popular mood in the face of dismal economic news and the global disarray of 21st century capitalism.

If the juxtaposition of these two contrasting images seems ambiguous, well, it is. Our suffering foreground image, drawn in an 8-inch by 10-inch size with color felt-tip and black drawing pens, has been portrayed in a cloak of white stars against a blue field, with two other watchful blue figures in the background. He/she is struggling with hands over ears to cope. Meanwhile, the steely centeredness of Obama’s image rises in the background. We have to admit that the feeling when we first combined the two images was pretty creepy. That’s one possible reaction. But an alternative response might be a possible tempering of the foreground panic by the reassuring solidity of the Obama image rising in the background.

Although originally prepared for an Inauguration Day (January 20th) exchange, the artistamp was mailed to a much wider list on a postcard satirizing a historic advertisement offering a free savings bank with the purchase of a toaster. A friend sent us the original image with the satirical coupons, which we modified to call attention to the TARP (the shabby acronym standing for Troubled Assets Relief Program) bailout of overextended banks and failing U.S. automakers using public funds (or, more accurately, public borrowing).

Our intent was not to saddle Obama with blame for TARP, but only to recognize the prior confining commitments (symbolized by a rubber-stamped vise) in place when Obama has taken office. Powerful financial and corporate interests are lobbying for continuing government financial support, while laying off thousands of workers as the unemployment rate climbs steadily toward 10 percent. Whether the Obama Inauguration may truly mark the beginning of a more hopeful era will depend on how well the rest of us lobby our own interests and the reaction to those efforts.

First Day of Issue

2008-11-21T16:36:00.000-08:00

21 November 2008

Welcome to the blogsite of Cascadia Artpost. Cascadia Artpost represents the formalization of a personal postal art expression for the northwestern part of the United States and larger region that is my home. In view from Seattle, Washington, at times when the clouds lift is the Cascade Mountain range, extending from the Canadian province of British Columbia to the U.S. state of California. If you are within sight of these beautiful mountains, you can consider yourself in the region of Cascadia. Cascadia is the part of the world I mentally and physically inhabit.

When I was a teenager, I collected postage stamps, and twenty years ago acquired a book on the watercolor artistamps of Donald Evans. However, my own interest in designing artistamps and mail-art began in November 2001, when I was organizing a set of photos from a visit to Latvia and accidentally downsized an image on the computer. The panorama from the 27th floor of Hotel Latvia became an intriguing stamp-sized image. I printed a copy of the image on an inkjet printer. I decided to create a faux Latvian set of stamps to decorate the outside of a surprise birthday package for one of my co-workers.

The result was so well received that I decided to keep experimenting with photos and graphic designs in a stamp format. An internet search introduced me to the term "artistamp," and what has been called "the eternal network" of mail artists. Making artistamps was for me an excellent way to synthesize my personal interests in photography, art and graphic design.

Initially I simply used "Cascadia" or "Cascadiapost" in the corner of stamps I created. In August 2002 I chose the name "Cascadia Artpost" and in January 2003 recorded this name as a member of AML, the Artistamp Mailing List, a loose association of mail artists in the U.S. and Canada.

How have artistamps made a difference in my life? Just like any artistic expression, artistamps reinforce personal self-identity by sharing a vision and ideas with others. I value the contacts and the content of postal exchanges over the years, and especially meeting a few of my correspondents in person. The interplay of postal services and the internet have created an opportunity for a network of global democratic expression among at least those who can afford either postage or have access to a computer connection. It is my fervent hope and prayer that our exchanges can also create occasions that help give voice to the visions and ideas those who are unable, for various reasons, to contribute to the network.

There will be more to come at this blog, but for now I'll close with a quote taken from an essay on memory written by an acquaintance in the United Kingdom:

"The fight for a sense of self-identity becomes a fight to make personal memory have a place in the wider social consciousness."

~ Jack at CASCADIA ARTPOST