Bananawalk and Bananarms

I hope it is not too late for my reply to an invitation Anna Banana has sent to me in Januray 2017 from Canada.



And I guess bananawalking will be too slow, and running won't help either, to have the mail arrive quicker. Enfin, we'll see...



Sent in this envelope to Canada.

To be a Penguin or not to be a Penguin

"Penguin in snow and ice landscape."

I think it always fascinating to see that a drawing suggests a complete object, or in this case, a complete animal, while in fact not the complete object or animal is shown.

Sent to Ti Ar Raden, who has a black and white mail art project.

Economics worth more than animal life...

Some of you might know that in the Netherlands and some other countries the fipronil scandal took place in the past months.
Millions of eggs, hard work for the hens, have been destroyed.
And worse, hundreds of thousands hens have been killed. Some farmers have chosen to have the hens moult to have remove the fipronil from their bodies.

The newspaper article shown above, saying the judge decides farmers are allowed to kill the - healthy - chicken, made me very angry. Because the headline mentions 'gifkippen', 'poisonchicken', a 'framing' word.. What can the poor chicken do about it? And the text says the chicken are 'economicaly worthless animals'... While each and every animal is worth being!

My very first Etegami

I never had heard of the word 'etegami' until I got involved in an etegami swap recently.

Etegami, or 'picture letter' or 'painted letter', origins from Japan and consists of a simple hand-painted drawing accompanied by apt words, mostly done in postcard size for a quick and easy mailing.

Etegami can be about daily objects. So I chose to draw/paint one of my favourite obkects: my morning coffee (with milk, no sugar).
Here you can see a picture of this very first etegami, next to the original object.



On the back side this etegami artistamp appeared.

And the stamp which I added to the envelope, invited me to make a longer green road:

The earth and the mail art network were born on the back of a turtle

I think it a good idea to consider the title to be true.

Front side of an envelope, created to send to Ryosuke Cohen for his Brain Cell project.



Back side of the envelope, which is the address side:



And the inside:



Wishing the turtles a safe journey.

About Chess, Stork and Orion soup

Two people to whom I can send black-and-white mail art are Ryosuke Cohen, for he is turning it into a colourful Brain Cell form, and Alex Witter, who has a mail art project on the theme 'Black and White'.

As I love chess, and horses, I chose to draw them these two chess sceneries.


For Alex, I added a stork on the back side, because the stork ('ooievaar' in Dutch) is the symbol of his city.



To the envelope for Ryosuke, suddenly Orion Soup appeared.



Wishing both pieces a safe and speedy travel!

P.S. There is a third person for whom we should create black-and-white mail art: also Ti Ar Raden has a mail art project on the theme.

P.S. 2. Real chess lovers will have spotted the error in the compilation made on top: nine squares in a row instead of eight! :-)

Mail art for the greatest Piggy Mail Art collector in the world

Yes, I think Nicole the most wonderful collector of Pig mail art I have ever seen. So it isn't hard to find out what kind of mail art I should create to send her: Pigs, of course!
The one below is a pointillistic one. If I ever will have more free time, I'd like to draw and paint pigs in more styles from art history (impressionist, classic, cave murals, expressionist, etcetera). Alas time is limited, so I hope to be able to do so step by step in the coming months, years...

Nicole also creates wonderful collages, of any subject. For me she created many beautiful weird animals. You can see them here; more mail art by NIcole you can find on her site.