Reply to Schoko, Berlin Germany

Schoko-
Thank you, if you ever have the opportunity to visit look me up. I'll give you a tour. If you look deeply into this Metropolis it will reveal a truth that will chill the blood. The city is an abstract concept, beyond physicality, time and place. It is without subject matter, without memory. The city is absence in as much.

-Mr. Sparrow, Postmaster General M.o.D.

absence is as much, 2008

india ink, rubber stamp, typewriter & collage
4" x 6"

John Held Jr., San Francisco, California USA

Received this wonderful rubber stamped envelop filled with goodies today. Some ATCs, an archival document of "Mail Art Island in Brain Cell Ocean" 2001, and a sheet of artistamps that I am seriously considering adding to and sending them out affixed to M.o.D replies.

It's been a very long time since I could actually get away from my work at the Post Office, but last vacation I took some eons ago was to Fluxus Island in Décollage Ocean. Fishing and swimming was great off of Ginger Island, you just had to look out for ubu sharks!
- Mr. Sparrow, Postmaster General M.o.D.

ATCs:

top: Tim Mancusi
bottom: John Held Jr.

Artistamp: John Held Jr. 2008
oil pastel & crayon on postage paper
11" x 8 1/2"

REFERENCE:

Mail Art Island in Brain Cell Ocean: A Korean Travel Diary, John Held Jr. Jeju Travel Diary

Mail Art Island in Brain Cell Ocean: A Korean Travel Diary: John Held Jr. Part II

Reproduction: Nam June Paik, "Décollage 4/63", 1963

Dewi, Toronto Canada

An artist and denizen of Hog Town, Dewi sent in this reminder that "despite all our technology and awareness it is hard to conquer addiction, homelessness and illness."

Dewi, Toronto
"Homeless man, Rue St. Cathrine" 2008
pen, pencil and watercolour

Dewi:
Destructon, like all major industrialized cities has it's history of homelessness and impoverished. Living entangled amongst the waste management corridors in shanty towns of cardboard, scavenged metal and dated refuge are the people that can no longer function within the system of the higher levels. Deposited and hidden away out of shame. Nothing here has lustre and nothing here has any value, this is where things are tossed to rot. Nothing thrives here it only continues because the sewage from above feeds it perpetually...
- Mr.Sparrow, Post Master General M.o.D.

Post to : Dewi 2008

india ink, watercoulour and rubber stamp

Petrofect Deep Sea Mining Islands

india ink and watercolour

dims: 4" x 11"
after Nagasawa Rosetsu, 'Landscape & Chinese Figures'

india ink and watercolour

dims: 4" x 11"
influence: Sesson Shukei (orig. Satake Heizo) (1504-1589)

Origin of the idea ....

This one was made with a series of similar postcards back in 1998, most of which have been mail out somewhere. It's notated on the back "Tales from the Metropolis of Destructon: The Approach". It got me doing these drawings again and I completed a much larger one that had been sitting around incomplete for 10 years with two others. I'm working on them currently.

india ink & watercolour on matt board
Dims: 11" x 4"

The Approach '98
The Petrofect Islands . These deep sea mining outposts tap into rich fossil and mineral deposits globally like the massive sulphide deposits near "black smokers" that spew 350-degree Celsius water into the frigid deep-sea environment that support strange marine organisms.