 So I'd like to welcome everybody to our second panel of the day this panel is called artist stamps and their makers See in the world in miniature. I have four people that I admire a Huge huge huge amount and I would like to take a moment to tell you a little bit about each of them And then we'll sort of get into a conversation about their work what they do how they came to the world of artist stamps What that means for them particular themes and that kind of thing So I'll go ahead and we'll jump right in So James Felter to my left in 1974 he curated the exhibition titled artist stamps and stamp images at the Simon Frazier University in Vancouver, Canada It was the first exhibition of its kind and it featured artist stamp makers from 35 different countries The exhibition toured throughout Europe in the United States and brought a higher visibility to the artist stamp community Throughout the 70s and 80s James collaborated with various artist stamp makers in the male art scene Including Buster Cleveland and EF Higgins who is in the audience as well. I think he went outside to have a smoke And Higgins is with us from New York, so that's fantastic All right, let's see in the 90s James was instrumental He was an instrumental part of the organization and curation of the international Invitational artist stamp exhibit at the Davidson Gallery in Seattle Today James is actively engaged in the world of artist stamps sending mailings via post Marar. Did I say that right? How would you pronounce it? And the Marar v in high commission, yeah Yeah, yes, okay. All right. Thank you and then Harley is also with us today in 1975 visual artist Harley created his own postal service calling it the Tristan local post and began issuing postage stamps in support of it in 1978 Harley closed his Tristan local post and created his very own independent state with its own postage stamps He named this land Tara Candela, which is loose Latin for land of light and in 1987 Harley curated Corresponding worlds artist stamps at the Allen Memorial Art Museum in Oberlin call at Oberlin College in Oberlin, Ohio Which is where his artist stamp archive now resides And then my good friend James Klein Let's see founding postmaster for Black Rock City in other words burning man James Klein has organized and facilitated thousands of pieces of outgoing mail In his own artist stamp work. He often incorporates scenes from the playa highlighting different artists and events which take place at burning man Recently James has played an active part in the save the Berkeley post office movement Let's see. I lost my place Issuing a commemorative artist stamp sheet with collaborator James Monday He's been active in the mail art and rubber stamp community since the 70s And then many of you in the audience know Jenny Lloyd Your fans are here Jenny. They love you So she gets a little bit of a delay because we're talking via Skype So if you guys have questions for Jenny, we'll have to talk a little slow Okay, as you know Jenny publishes numerous books related to correspondence art and artist stamps under the imprint Tropic Chacha press While living in San Francisco in the 70s She joined up with the Bay Area Dadaists meeting artists and collaborators such as Bill gag Leon and Anna banana In 1984 Jenny was one of the organizers of inner Dada 84 a mail art Congress Which took place in various venues throughout San Francisco and which led to an even deeper involvement on her part with the mail art scene Currently she maintains the Gina lotta post archive in Jupiter, Florida, and as I mentioned she's here via Skype So we can see her right there. Just exciting So I thought that I would jump right in with our guests because we I just have some questions And I'm sure that the audience will have questions for you as well And so I'd love to hear a little bit about how each of you got involved in making artist stamps because it's this sort of Offshoot of mail art that sometimes people fall in love with immediately or they're a little bewildered by it Like what is that and how could you do it? So I'd love to hear background from each of you how you became involved You want me to start? Oh sure Well, it's a very specific question about getting a starting in artist stamps, so but I'll do a little run-around I as a teenager I was a stamp collector my father bought me a small stamp collection book And I ended up buying the world global volumes, you know two or three and I collected the world And I couldn't specialize on anything and I kept collecting stamps until I went to university in 1957 I actually started designing my own first-day covers doing collages So I consider those my first mail art, of course, I didn't know what mail art was I don't think mail art existed in those days, but I still have two of them. So they're in my archives Then I went to the University of South Florida where I graduated in fine art specializing in painting But in those days we considered ourselves visual artists not painters or whatever Then I went to South America and I was there from 65s and 66 when North American culture Went through a revolution the pill came out and LSD came out two pills Exactly and I came back and and emigrated to Seattle I had grown up in New York and went to University of Florida went to South America and didn't want to go to California So I ended up in Seattle on Lake Union Getting stoned on acid Then I the following year I went to Vancouver British Columbia and started working in the Center for Communication in the Arts at Simon Fraser University And the man who hired me was an American artist named Joel Smith and he painted on postage stamps And that got me excited about stamps again use oil or water color. I think he was using acrylic in those days and Of course, and I did the smallest documented exhibition in the world Of one of his stamps on a stage set in the foyer of the theater and that we had a poster this big and Art was this big and it was in the center. Yeah, and those posters are very hard to come by That was my first experience in doing what I consider now an artist in Then I went to Montreal because I was the curator of the gallery then and I was looking for art and I went to la guild graphique which is a printmaking workshop and Guy there had done a book called the dead letters and in the book He had inserted a sheet of stamps Maybe three across didn't six down small sheet called the dead letter stamps. Oh, gosh I have to have those so I actually bought the sheet of stamps. I didn't buy the book But he sold me the sheet of stamps Came back to Vancouver and then one day who appears in the gallery, but Robert fried from San Francisco And he'd been coming up to do Covers for the alternative newspaper in which was in those days the alternative newspaper called the George straight he was doing covers for them and He had these very very large offset full-color perforated sheets of stamps called the non-negotiable eights And and he also had seriograph prints which with embossed perforations now But embossing to simulate the perforations and I managed to force the acquisitions committee to buy them for the university collection and He he came through several times and Dana actually came through one day Ken Friedman came through one day and I was thinking now. There's an artist in California There's an artist in in Montreal in one in Vancouver working with the stamp image. I Thought how many more are there? So I asked Dana and I asked Ken you know to Send me addresses and names and then I found out about fluxes Ray Johnson and Robert Watson Everything in New York and I found out about the artworkers newsletter in New York So I wrote an ad that was published in their workers newsletter and for about two years. I click I gathered information. There was another artist in Canada Christopher Pratt who did large seriograph prints of stamp Newfoundland stamps So in see there was no artist stamps. There was artists stamps two words and then Images of artist stamps. So that's why the title of the book was that of the exhibition was so much when Ken Friedman came through again and we Sort of talking about it and sort of I finally set the date For the show, which was October of 1974 and it will be the 40th anniversary in October So it's 40 years. I've been collecting information about artist stamps. Let's talk I asked Ken to design the commemorative stamp and Ken being Ken sent me two logos and said here use these so I made I designed the stamp and put his logos on them and Claimed it was his and he eventually renounced it because he didn't like the curve on the corner but he did sign them all and That's also I did my commitment my sheet of stamps my first one for the exhibit Because I always considered myself a visual artist more than a curator I just happened to be making my money as a curator couldn't make it as a visual artist So my stamp was called was a Canada stamp With a maze maple leaf and it commemorated the year. I became a Canadian citizen 1974 so I'm a dual citizen now So so that was the the beginning of my sort of introduction Into male art and artist stamps and everything else and and we printed a mimic Not a mimograph a photocopied catalog I designed it as a real stamp collector's catalog, but we couldn't afford to publish it so I'm mimmy I'm not mimograph but photocopied some and mailed them out and Some of you got information about the show and started contacting me and then The more work was added Carl choose were added after the first initial one I think Anna bananas were added Dana Ashley was already in the show. He did some altered stamps And this was the show in 74. This was the show in 74 and that but the No, this was after the initial showing. Oh, I see. Okay when the cat that catalog was distributed Okay, and then I began to hear about other artists because I didn't know Ed Higgins found out about it and called me from Colorado And so he sent me sheets and because it was traveling I added right as it went right in two years later I received a grant from the Canada Council to publish the catalog I see so some of those artists that were added from the initial one got added to the catalog and also the Kerner Foundation in Vancouver. We discovered had money. They had to get rid of Wouldn't that be nice? So and they needed grant applications right away So I applied for a grant and I got two-thirds of the artist's value of the stamps because I had them send in the value of the stamps And because we had you know, we were borrowing them, right? It wasn't a mail art It was a gallery show. I didn't know about mail art shows then So I wrote all of the artists and said would you accept two-thirds of the value that you originally stated and One of the artists was Donald Evans Wow, and in touch with him and he sent me a couple of sheets and designed a special sheet For Simon Fraser University and for those of you who don't know the work of Donald Evans He did these beautiful beautiful watercolors stamps on a whole different range of subject matter often dealing with nature and Like oceanscapes and beautiful work See his own countries. Yeah So he wasn't really a see I didn't Restricted to mail art. It was Artists who worked with the stamp image In one either with prints or watercolors or drawings or whatever And the reason I did that is because I didn't know if I could find enough real perforated stamps in at that time But since then they've all been dealing with that material. Okay. Does that answer that question? Let's let Harley talk a little bit So Harley tell me how you got into artist stamps. I have to ask You something first, I don't recall being asked how much my stamps were worse Well, you had to fill out a form you filled out a form. I did. Yes, you did. I didn't take anything without a form We'll talk about later My descent and Billitelli can artist stamp hell began at an early age And we have to blame Tommy Babs the little fat boy who was in my third grade class and He came to show and tell one day and he had a Ritz cracker box And he opened it up and all of these World War two era Japanese stamps fell out Wow, and I was I can still see them because I sit And I was mesmerized and Also, probably questioning why he got so much attention, but Anyway, so I became enthralled with stamps and that Manifest itself by going to the library and looking in the National Geographic and finding not just the naked pictures, but really obscure a toku leu islands Tristan, Dukuna pit Karen Obscure places and I started writing letters to postmasters and people on these islands and I got really great mail So they actually replied back to you. Yeah, I had the the big man Gordon glass on Tristan Dukuna which had at that time 200 and some occupants until it blew up in 63 or something You know we corresponded for a long time Anyway, so we went on and this was a stamp business and then I'm an Painter and a collages by profession and so it was only natural those two things would come together But from a philotelic point of view infallibly there are Local post and local post private enterprises that preceded the establishment of government hegemony over the postal system So I made a local post Originally Tristan local post my son's name Tristan. He was named after Tristan Dukuna So I Tristan local post and I like Carl had a couple entertaining visits from postal inspectors The second one wore a gun So they they the postmaster came around it was one of the last of the pork barrel of pointy's the 1940s term and he sat in the corner and read a comic book belonging to my son and Then I talked the other man and I spread everything out and I said well, I can explain this to you They were concerned about my stamps which had a charcoal self-portrait which in no way Stamped and I said I can explain it from a philotelic point of view or from an art history point of view and He continued to look totally blank And so I said when you find someone in your huge organization who knows what I'm talking about send them over They took umbrage at all that but anyway, and did they take the stamps as well no no they give them back No, no, they just came because they were seeing my mail coming in to Oberlin little post office You know, I have no idea. It's all stupid. Yeah, what year was that? Tristan local post was Like mid early to mid 70s mid 70s As we come to the next chapter The late great Ellen Johnson the doyen of art historians at Oberlin College a really crotchety woman Came in one day and slapped down this thing and she said I don't know what this is, but I know you like stamps And it was Jimmy's do over here It was the catalog and I thought oh my god because there was nothing in any of the art press on artist stamps mail art absolutely nothing, you know, I was right in the forefront of nerds and I Bundled up my stuff. I do want to see that paper Bundled up my stuff and send it off I just felt her and you put it in some time apparently and Then when I sold my archive We'll talk about that in a minute to Oberlin College I Had worked by over 1200 artists so in the interim. I was very busy corresponding with people So and then I organized corresponding worlds, which when was that? 84 85 I fought through three museum directors any of you have gone through that, you'll know what I mean And they were terrified because Oberlin's a small snot college in northern Ohio and the museum is very very nice Has a beautiful collection and it was I think if not the first but really one of the first museum presentations of male art and artist stamps And So I had to fight these people tooth and nail to get it through and they were horrified and I explained to them that No, they couldn't curate the exhibit because it all belonged to me and if they did I'd cancel the whole thing so and I I managed to squeeze out of the budget flying in about ten artists, right I Know you didn't go and yes, I think you did. Yeah. Yeah, I know I know Judas Hoffberg was there. There was a lack of women Do only to the fact that the people most of the people I knew were males. I tried to bring in artists geographically I brought in John and And who else was there brought in Higgins? Yeah Ed Barney Chuck Welch crackerjack kid came anyway, I think so. Oh Yeah, dogfish was there. I first met dogfish Robert Rudeen and Crackerjack kid and I do want to mention this man's name. He was a dear soul Mike Bidner Yeah, he's the one who coined the term artist stamps artist stamp putting it together He had the first real bringing together from a philotelic point of view and an artist stamp point of view Bringing up bringing those two things together and we all met in London, Ontario and we had a terrific time And that's when I first met Robbie and crackerjack So and I've curated some other shows I've been real pissy about it because I want it to be understood as an art form And I'm all for democracy in the ecumenical I air on that sometimes, but I want it viewed as an art form not a sidelined and of course In France for instance the National Postal Museum has a whole room full of artist stamps And often put out publications that are devoted specifically to artist stamps. Yeah, yeah, so we'd like to see that happen here and Unlike mr. Darling, I didn't declare my total non-interest in income But I think an artist lot in this culture generally turns out like that So but I'm still here, and I'm still making stamps and Will do until you know the final curtain Thank you Let's have James talk a little bit the other James Klein about his work that he does with Burning Man Burning Man stuff. Yeah Just briefly show of hands how many people don't know what the Burning Man festival is Just a few, okay How many how many people have been to Burning Man in the room? Yeah, a few. Okay, that's great burners Sure that better. Yeah, then Jenny can hear you too. Okay. Well, this is just very briefly the Burning Man festival started in San Francisco With people going to Baker Beach and burning the big effigy of a man made out of wood while they played musical instruments and Smoked pot probably and a few things like that The event got so popular and grew so quickly that the city of San Francisco wouldn't allow it anymore And it moved to the Black Rock Desert in Nevada, and it's grown to about 60,000 people now And it's a week of sorry to interrupt the starting year of Burning Man was I don't know exactly Middle 80s Yeah, okay something like that so Speaking as an art school dropout I Went into other fields, but I kept my love of art and imagery by using rubber stamps and Communicating with friends with decorated envelopes and started finding other people who are doing the same thing Through this publication which no longer exists. Sadly global mail Some of you may remember this there was a listing of all kinds of art projects male artists convicts looking for pen pals Anybody who used paper and pencil or crayon and I found a friend in there Julie Pesley Who was living in Colorado? I live in Berkeley and we got together and when she moved out to the Bay Area We decided to go up to Burning Man together and we did that in 1996 the first time you go to Burning Man is Like taking acid the first time It just can't be described and there were only 8,000 people at that time So one of the features of Burning Man is that it's a gift economy You're supposed to bring something to share whether it's a performance Service giving a massage Opening a bar and giving free drinks making coffee cooking sandwiches Whatever and the other aspect of it is that it's completely non-commercial There's nothing for sale except coffee tea and ice And you can't imagine how refreshing that is to be somewhere where someone isn't trying to sell you a t-shirt a hat something so we decided that for our gift for the next year that we went up we would share mail art and So we decided to open a little post office and some other friends of mine came along one fellow is a neon sign guy And he'd been collecting salvaged bits of neon signs for years and so he brought enough letters to spell post office in Mismatched letters mismatched colors mismatch fonts and we build an open counter pretty much like this another fellow brought a printing press and In the meantime we had taken photographs captured in 1996 Turned them into a sheet of stamps, which were perforated by John Held for us And we handed those out fastened on to envelopes envelopes with some Rubber stamped Statements on them and it was wildly successful. It was people were just standing in line waiting for these things in addition we designed a sort of Emotive card and people were supposed to take this and write down something that made them happy sad mad whatever confess We collected those and put them inside the burning man, so they were burned up There was sort of a nice gesture, so this was also Incredibly popular that they Moved the camp our camp. It's a theme camp burning man is organized around groups of people who come up there with a common Idea and create a theme camp So they moved our theme camp into center camp and it's become sort of a utility almost like a real post office In past years they got the approval of a cancellation with the local postmistress at Gerlach, Nevada And now the cancellation that goes out on that mail is the only cancellation that comes out of burning man and two years ago they Processed about 20,000 pieces of mail incredible, so the postmistress of Gerlach, Nevada has a Job on her hands for about one week of the year. Does she love you or hate you? She likes us We make sure she has stuff wow, okay swag 20,000 pieces of mail And so every year after that we've created stamps. They carry usually photographic images from the year before And we have people who are in the stamps come to get pictures of themselves in the stamps the next year So I had some of these out at the postal window the other night when I was abusing you Oh, right. So if any of you were at the opening reception on Friday night for the mail art book show at the San Francisco Center for the book James was our postmaster for that evening. So that's a little added note for you guys. Yeah So I brought some stamps and at the reception I'll have some samples that you can have if you tear a panel off the sheets so that you get a copy of each type I don't know if there's enough for everybody, but get in their elbows and feet Okay So that's how I got into artist stamps and still produce them. So I guess that's about it Do you have a favorite stamp sheet that you've done from Burning Man? The first one was really nice. Yeah, you still have sheets of it. Yeah, I have I have a sheet I make copies and one nice thing about it is that there's a flaw when I composed it I didn't get the size of the stamps vertically just right so that part of the printing is cut off So does it become highly valuable? I know. Art is proof. Yeah, exactly. Thank you James Now we'll Now we'll try and get Jenny Lloyd to come into the conversation. I'm hoping that she can hear me loud and clear The question is how did you initially learn about artist stamps or get involved in artist stamps? Can you tell us a little bit about that as well as your work that you do with the Gina lot of postal archive? Okay, great. Well, I started out Finding out it started out by hanging out with some arty friends in College I wasn't an art major, but my electives were all art and I was hanging out with them And they were talking about neighbor Sophisticated New York City folks, right? So they'd come back After a weekend or so telling me about the shows that they had seen and they'd also talk about Fluxes and some of the fluxes events because they were friends of fans of fluxes So I got interested in fluxes and found out about Robert Watts Doing the sheets of stamps and doing the parody on the postal system And it interests me because I had been a collector of stamps since a child, you know The back of the comic book Where you'd send away for the stamps. Well, I did that all the time And then later on it became a first-day cover collector with the postal system But anyway, when I found out that other people that Robert Watts was doing stands. I was like, oh artists are doing stance So right around that same time I came to San Francisco and ended up going to the Noe Valley Street fair Yay, Noe Valley And I met Anna banana and Bill gaglione Anna was dressed up as a banana on roller skate Imagine that That and we became friends and I would go over and help with Assembling they had various rubber stamp projects and assemblies and things like that and I was working With a company that was copy machines So I started to see all this copy art and ended up organizing a show called the copy art X exhibition In order for that show to succeed We had they introduced me to Buster Cleveland who knew a lot of people that were doing stands or copy art and And Anna and Bill and between the three of them and just notices an art week newspaper We had a big show and it was held at Lama Mel Is Nancy still in the audience is Nancy in the audience? She's raising her hand for you Jenny Yeah, and she's saying hello and giving him a big exhibition of copy art and in that Show were a lot of arty's stamps And that was my first exposure to really a variety of arty's stamps There was work from Higgins and Chew and Cleveland and Beelman and banana and Pavel Petsatz and Spiegelman and James Klein scarlatina and lost Banana fish or captain biology just to name a few of the people that were participating in that show Mm-hmm, and I was intrigued by the variety and got really inspired actually just actually do my own up until then I had Had only made photo stamps that you would send away. I think it was Oshkosh magazine or Miles Kimball magazine something like that where you could send away and get your photo turned into stamps And that was my only exposure to my making my own stamps. So when when I saw these Incredibly beautiful prints I had to give a try So that got me Interested in the stamp production of my own And then I ended up having a storefront south of market for a year And what I think it was either the first or second show was an arty's stamp show And I got a pile of arty stamps that came in for my own collection So over the years I made stamps and I made I traded with people and created my own collection of stamps Which has now turned into the gene a lot of post arty's stamp museum Should I talk a little bit about the museum? You know what let me ask you a question Anna mentioned earlier that you that she slept on your floor in that storefront on 6th street. Do you remember that? Yeah on 6th ave. So it's a true story Yeah, 6th street 6th ave. Okay That it was What was what was the question about it? I was just curious and I wanted to know what kind of artwork you put in your window when you had that space In the storefront. I had a window and It was a live work studio for me And then I had a window and I had performances as well as exhibitions in the window And it changed once a month and we would have incredible openings You know for the people who were exhibiting and doing performances live in the window And got a lot of attention From you know people with a crowd standing out on the sidewalk At the opening's That's funny because it reminds me of a similar thing that was going on in portland in the late 80s and early 90s called the church of Elvis Which some of you might know Yeah, hands waving in the audience Right and I actually had a mail art show at this space called the james team dean mail art show during that year as well and um Which was quite popular that was a big show And then of course I did interdata 84 after that And there was a huge exhibition of mail art during that particular week long event I guess I'd like to ask the group in general here Do you have a favorite sort of if you could design any stamp for the us postal service? What would it be? You don't have a favorite You'd commemorate yourself on a stamp All right Fair harley. What do you think? What do you think james, what would you design for the us ps Something so beautiful it could save itself people would just have to buy it And the coffers would fill in the post office and we'd all be happy again Um Ryan one of our members of the correspondence co-op in san francisco was telling me yesterday that the rates have gone up on postage In canada so high that mail artists are thinking about stopping that they can't really afford to keep doing it So what? Yeah There's also a proposal right now before Parliament I think to ban home delivery in canada Wow mentioned it Wow So that's a great question since we have a canadian on our panel. I mean how do how our mail art is reacting to this Huge rate increase in canada. Well, I It's it's like I did I make my own christmas cards I consider that my a form of mail art and I sent over a hundred this year and I figure I don't care how much it costs It's worth getting something into the hands of your friends that you've had over the years And if it costs a dollar two dollars three dollars to mail it, I mean international postage is quite expensive Yeah, I'm willing to do it at least once a year All right How do you guys feel about the 49 cent uh rate increase recently? It's fine. It's still one of the cheapest prices in the world. Absolutely Sure It's the congress And not dealing with postal problems So it's political stuff Oh lean forward because no one can hear you. Oh, yeah, it's political. It's congress Yeah to for the privilege of having someone carry An actual artifact that you've created whether it's a letter or mail art whatever to somebody else for 49 cents anywhere within the united states or The us the apo the military postal system for the same price is amazing. Yeah, it's it's just great And I had another idea it seems to me like If some large corporation like starbucks or something like that Could get together with the post office and Identify the post office buildings that are not being used that they deem surplus real estate that have big lobbies say Why couldn't we have a community gathering place? That's the old-fashioned post office and the coffee house put them together Right Make a stamp for it There is hope A wonderful artist in belgium was asked by the belgium government to design a real postage stamp commemorating mail art and he did And that was recently. Yeah Not that many years ago. Okay. Yeah So I know that the question that everyone in the audience has for all of you. Can you talk a little bit about the perforating? First perforation was from John held for that first year of burning man stamps as I mentioned And I was taken with that machine. I thought wow, this is so cool So I have a friend I was living in San Luis Obispo at the time and I have a friend who's really good at finding stuff And he's a good guy machinist and does all kinds of things despite the fact that he's in a wheelchair And they said I've got a challenge for you Can you find me a perforator? And after I established with him what it was he called me back within a week and said got one Whoa said, okay. Where is it? He says, oh, it's down here in a barn. Let's go get it So I drove down there and I had a pickup truck at the time and we went and here's this Barn I guess the roof was caved in water was everywhere and I thought oh, this is going to be a wreck But in a dry corner Here's a perforator. I was expecting something like john's a nice little tabletop ross back. Yeah This thing is a south width. It's about Four and a half feet tall at the top part. It'll perforate 30 inches straight and it weighs about 400 pounds. Holy moly And how much was it 25 cents a pound I just last year. I just bought an electric ross back perforator Uh that was in the oldest chinese printing shop in canada, which happened to be three blocks from my home That's still cost me 200 dollars to get it moved and I paid 700 for the perforator But that's canadian dollars And it's electric. Let me tell you yeah, but I'll talk can I talk about the perforator I have Yes, sure. Yeah, because that's important to the weekend. I think I had a I had a roseback Perforator, but it was so heavy. I ended up selling it when I moved to florida But now I have a beautiful tabletop monitor Perforator from patricia tabner's estate. Yeah, and let me tell you having this portable easy to move Perforator is a dream compared to what I had to go through with that huge Monster of a roseback perforator. Have you have you perforated anything with it yet? Oh, well, you've got my back sheets Oh, that's right. Yeah Yeah, so I've done a bunch already on that and uh, and I found a couple other things to do with it So I'm having fun So it's gone to a good home Yes, and did you uh, did it get trucked to you? It got Like fluid because they're so heavy It was but you know, I'm a strong man can pick it up What can I say? I have a word on perforators myself Oh here. Great. Great. Sorry. Yeah I have a rotary roseback perforator Which is how I am able to produce the international art post editions of 500 to 1000 to 1500 And I have at this point only five perf wheels and below the wheels are the dies and So it means that every edition I produce has to go through the machine four times In order to do the 10 rows or whatever it is on the perforation I got mine with Ed Barney initially from Vancouver bookbinders But then Ed left it's sitting under his deck for a while and I went I gotta have this He said well, I don't really want it. So I bought it off him. I mean, I think we paid 50 bucks or something for it It probably cost us 200 or so to move it But I now have it running and uh, it's uh, it's a it's a dream and it's electric too. It's electric It's motorized. So I basically it's hand-fed You know each each sheet goes through I use three three or four sheets at a time But uh, anyway on the subject of perforators. I could not remain silent Nor should you Well, I guess I want to ask our guests if they have any uh, sort of like Last or parting comments about artist stamps and then we'll take questions from the audience if everyone's fine with that Um, you know, I guess in your own work. Do you look for any sort of do you deal with any specific subject matter or themes ever? Well, I think most of us issue our own Our own entities Stamps from our own entities And mine will deal with maybe a topical Subject of the day something in the news. I did one for 9 11. I did one when Diane died I've also done some with my own art and I've done some with art from South America and It's whatever smooths me Yeah, I love that Harley I do very few I mean most of them are from collages or paintings of my own work Every once in a while if I'm in a pissy mood. I'll do something political I did I did things for the axis of evil. Oh, right book I don't I don't like confusing the two things I think beauty sort of justifies its own existence Not that I'm not aware of all the other stuff going on Thank you James most of the imagery that I have is from burning man So the stamp sheets have burning man images when I'm doing other things. I try to make them humorous or Nice beautiful in a way For Christmas cards, occasionally I've taken florals and made stamps from those Um and then combining things in unexpected ways. I took a A little action figure of Frankenstein and a much shorter one of donald duck And put them together so that they looked like they were dancing and called that it takes two So it was a denomination of two. Yeah Jenny what about you when you design artist stamps? What sort of imagery and theme do you work with? Um, I think I'm understanding your questions. So I'll answer it and you can tell me if I'm wrong. Yeah, sure enough um My interest in already stamp design has been in computer graphics and creating them on the computer from the very beginning and I started out with um As a tester of a computer graphic program color That was not on the market, but ended up as in the weather service Oh, wow the real-time weather satellite weather Graphics that that was the forerunner to that but that was back in 1980 Something like that But I've been interested and then I taught computer graphics at eloni. So my source of information Inspiration has always been what can I do on the computer? And also I'm a photographer from way back So anything that's turning a photograph into a stamp is also something that I really enjoy doing Wow, thank you. That's a great answer I think now I'd like to take some questions from the audience James Klein talked about um, the story of turning an artist's post office at burning man into a real legitimate government officialized post office and so my question for all of you is has there ever been an artist stamp That has been turned into an official Government sanctioned postal service stamp. I don't know of anything. I don't know the only examples I know are in europe where the government has actually asked An artist who does stamps to to do one that would be official, but it hasn't been created ahead of time So I don't think any government would authorize or authenticate one an existing one Yeah The other thing that's happened is that uh, most Postal systems are issuing stamps that are official stamps, but you can insert your own image As long then when they first started that in this country one of the print your own postage saying someone Slipped in a baby picture of Adolf Hitler and someone in the government was astute enough to know that So now they you know, they peruse to see that it's all dogs and things kittens What were you going to say james? um, I was going to say that I just I have something that Add to this kind of peripherally and don't try this at home But some of the some of the people who've gotten our burning man stamps have put them on as the only stamp on an envelope And it has worked Well, and michael thompson does that quite a bit from chicago But it's not a big deal because no one sees your mail just machines No, I mean I know what you're talking about, but I mean letters have been mailed with We won't even go into what they've been mailed with but No, what no one sees the mail It does get triggered in sorting machines if it doesn't have phosphor coating on it Which is what they use to flip the letter over so that the cancel hits the stamp But there are lots of letters that get through that, you know, don't have legitimate postie stamps But that's when you meet the postal inspector your new friends Another question How would you encourage people who find they want to do Work in artist stamps that may they may not even have say a visual art background But they're really interested in trying to get started and do their own What you know to the whole group? What would you say to encourage people to do that advice for newcomers? I started with collages actually it was easy. It was easy and you can take other images and cut them up and You know make a thing and and then you can actually reduce it Photographically to make a little small one So that's one idea great advice Anyone else? The computers I don't do any of it, but the computer has all these programs where you can you know cut and paste Not like we cut and paste in my day, but cut and paste on different programs and you can you know come up with a zillion stamp images And then you know all the printing shops or you can print them yourself And then if you don't have one of these zillion dollar perforators Like my fellow compatriots up here you call john or jenny Other questions back in the back regarding the cost of postage. It's possible to lock in your Cost of postage for the rest of your life at 49 cents by buying forever stamps And at the rate that the uh post office is raising rates You'll probably get a better return on your money than putting it in any Mutual fund or sock. Yeah D is right about that But you don't get to buy any new stamps. Yeah Yeah, james has a point that he'd like to make I I I just want to go back to joel smith who was one of the first artists that I met who painted on stamps And I asked him why he did this You know and he said well I can have a whole museum in my wallet That is such a beautiful statement and if there's a war I can sneak it across the border very easily It's like philiu carrying his art gallery and is like in the top of his cap And he'd take his cap off and show it. Yeah, exactly. Oh, that's so beautiful I love it. I want to thank everybody for coming I want to thank my panelists so much And I'd also like to invite each and every single one of you to the reception that we'll be having for these fantastic folks