Mail Me Art 3

I was pleased to be asked to participate in Mail Art 3, along with another 199 invited artists and illustrators. Here is a scan of my piece just before it hit the postbox!

Mail Me Art is a British-based project, run by Darren Di Lieto, the founder and co-editor of the illustration news portal The Little Chimp Society.

Mail Me Art is a fun little project that was created by Darren Di Lieto of The Little Chimp Society in late 2006. He was looking for a way to connect on a real world level with all of the brilliant and talented illustrators who had become part of his community and network. Mail Art was the perfect way to accomplish this task. The Mail Me Art project has held exhibitions up and down the UK, and was published as very nice book by HOW Books. It has also been featured or mentioned by Digital Arts, Computer Arts, Design Week and The Telegraph over the years. Mail Me Art is still going strong to this day and there seems to be no stopping it!

Here are the instructions I recieved:

Buy, make or steal an ordinary C5 (162 × 229 mm) paper envelope.

Take an A5 piece of card or two pieces of A4 paper folded once and place them inside the envelope to make it a bit more sturdy. You can decorate, draw or write a message on the inside contents, but your mail art will not be opened by us.

Now add our address to the centre of the back of the envelope, with your name, email address and country in the bottom right-hand corner. In the bottom left-hand corner include the words 'open me' or 'empty', depending on whether you included anything in the envelope or not.

Your envelope is now prepared for you to start work on it. The front of the envelope is your canvas. Do not include our address or the words Mail Me Art in your artwork. The topic, theme or inspiration for your mail art is at your discretion; it can be about anything you want. The artwork does not need to convey a message unless you want it to.

Do your thing!

Scan it or take a photo of your work and email it to us. High resolution is preferred.

Take it to the post office, buy some stamps, stick them to the top-right of the back of the envelope (the side with the address). It can be first or second class post, but do not send it recorded or signed for. Also at this point it has no value and is just a very nice envelope and not a piece of Art. If you have to fill in a customs form, please put zero value. Do not wrap your mail art in another envelope and do not worry about any damage or scratches that may occur while the work is in transit. We want you to send it as-is. In the past, some work has been damaged, drawn on by the post office workers or not even made it to the destination, but this is a risk we hope you're willing to take. :)

Take a breath!

Now wait for us to email you to say it has arrived and add it to the website.

Come to or show your support for the exhibition(s)!

Get a nice copy of the Mail Me Art book sent to you in the post. :)

Prepare for Mail Me Art 4! We're planning this for 2015-2016.

A Common Thread - Up it goes!

Nearly a year on from being commissioned, the huge artwork ‘Spital Hill: A Common Thread’ is finally complete.  Richard Hanson and I have been working on this since spring last year, and today the panels were installed. And it looks fantastic, which at this stage in a project is always a massive relief… Located next to the new huge Tesco on Saville Street, by the Wicker Arches in Burngreave, these panels celebrate the people who live in, work on and use Spital Hill, one of the key thoroughfares from the centre to the north of Sheffield. 

The work was completed on Friday last  – thousands of people will drive past this every day, and its far and away the largest piece of art I’ve ever been involved in producing.  Thanks especially to my collaborator Richard Hanson, photographer and artist Yvonne Roberts who pulled the bid together and worked with us on the early part of the project, Andrew and the team from Sheffield City Council, who’ve seen the work through to completion, and, most of all, to everyone who was willing to have their picture taken as part of this project.

Forster Square Reunion

Animated drawn music video for a track by the Housekeeping Society. Now I enter my blue period.

Magpie Cornerman

Down but not out........

Orange Dog

Final image from last nights live projection set using Tagtool, part of the Dancing with the Orange Dog experience.

Dancing With The Orange Dog - Plenty of bite!

Dancing with the Orange Dog exhibition installed at Stockton

Live Projection on the interior of the Set with the Housekeeping Society

The House Keeping Society playing in the opened set

The exhibition set during construction

Two venues down and one to go! Tomorrow we take the experience that is Dancing with the Orange Dog to Salford Quays and the Lowry, you can see what people have been saying about the show here!

Live Projection with the Orange Dog

Here are a couple of images captured by photographer Yvonne Roberts during a live set and live drawing performance which forms part of 'Dancing with the Orange Dog", an amazing 154 Collective project. I was projecting live drawn visuals over The Housekeeping Society as they played tracks from their latest album, Songs from the Orange Dog.