May Day

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.