#efcmailboxchallenge

 

One of our Etegami Fun Club members, Kasia from Poland, suggested mailboxes (for sending letters) and letter boxes (for receiving letters) as our group theme for April. What immediately came to my mind was a collage series I did years years and years ago when I was still active in the international mailart community. I had combined vintage Japanese stamps with photos of the kind of mailbox that was common in Japan when I was a child. 

I thought of submitting one of the original series, but when I looked through my digital records, they felt much too cluttered for my current tastes. So I did a similar one using fewer postage stamps, hand-written words, and a properly "wiggly" hand-painted mailbox. I couldn't motivate myself to paint the postage stamps, as I have plenty of real used stamps that I'm always looking for a way to use in my art. 

Speaking of postage stamp art, I am a big fan of Jackie Long's "Stamp People" series and hope to do something like that with Japanese stamps one of these days.  I am the lucky recipient of several of Jacki's collage cards.

By the way, I did today's etegami collage in my "Life Between Cultures" etegami journal so that I could also post it on the Artist's Journal Workshop group page on Facebook.