Here is a quick little “housekeeping” notice. I have a business Facebook page called Carolyn’s Stamp Store that I started back in 2011 to help market my rubber art stamp line. After expanding into other art supplies in addition to the other rubber stamps, I renamed my Etsy shop CarolynHDesign.
The Carolyn’s Stamp Store Facebook page has been getting a lot more traffic lately so I updated some of the info on it this morning so people who visit it don’t get TOO lost and confused. I have a lot of tidying up to do on it as well as on most of my online accounts and web sites.
The month of July 2023 will be my 25th anniversary of launching my first web site, Lime Green Evolution World of Art, later renamed to www.limegreennews.com! Things really change a lot in 25 years don’t they! The Lime Green News site needs a lot of repair and updating but still has a lot of content on it, some of it useful if you ignore the aging infrastructure. I have a very different philosophy of web sites now than when I started. As I repair I will start replacing the infrastructure bit by bit while keeping some things “old fashioned” on purpose.
Back in 2020, my husband Tom and I made a series of videos to help share art with people, which we called Virtual Art Parties. We did 8 or 9 videos before getting overwhelmed with exhaustion and personal crises (mostly affecting me). I had nothing in the tank for awhile to attempt to help other people, I needed everything I had to survive then help myself so I could help others. I attempted to restart the Virtual Art Party series this past spring. Here is the resulting video with special guest my Dad, Don Hasenfratz. This was going to be a lot longer but it got cut off early, maybe by a wifi glitch or something. I didn’t realize until it was over that only the introduction was recorded. After watching it, I am sharing it here because I still like what was conveyed. Check it out if you’re interested.
I have experimented with other video platforms in the meantime, but for now Facebook Live is still the easiest that I know so I’ll likely keep using it for awhile as I gradually restart the video series.
A black and white collage faux postage stamp sheet I made. I used to get these printed on gummed paper and send them to other mail artists. Circa 1997.
I’ve been out of the Mail Art and ‘Zine scenes for over 20 years now, and to my surprise for some reason I’m getting nostalgic about it and thinking about getting back into it a little bit. I’ve never stopped making faux postage designs, rubber stamped art and Dada-influenced collages, but I stopped networking except through my web site because I got spooked by some of the extreme networkers I was occasionally in contact with. I figured I no longer had the stomach to participate in the “underground”. I mainly was networking for art and creativity and I’m still inspired creatively by what I did back then. I was not in it for anarchy, political change or social change except for some social commentary that I occasionally included.
I think part of the reason I feel like possibly participating again is that when I got spooked, I was in the middle of a couple of Mail Art group projects that I didn’t finish and I never sent out the documentation. I’ve felt guilty about this for a long time. One was called the “Turn Off Your Television Project” and another was called the “Fish Tapestry Project”. After writing the research paper I just published yesterday, I think I might want to finish that documentation and fulfill the obligation I took on myself 20 years ago. I probably won’t be able to get in touch with all the people who participated but I can try.
The Turn Off Your Television Project on display in my 1998 art show “Areas Affected by Shapes”.
A graphic I made to promote the “Turn Off Your Television Project”, circa 1998.
My friend Mark Reed who co-hosted the fish tapestry project with me passed away late last October and it would be a great tribute to him if I could finish that one too someday. I have only this week been able to bring myself to look again at some of his artwork that his family gave to me. I always thought he threw away too much of his old work and I’m glad that I have some of it. I may even finish some of the stuff that is unfinished. We collaborated and shared ideas a lot back in the day. I think he would like that.
Oh how I used to love making animated gif art!
I would be pleased if someone finished my old work after I’m gone. I’d rather have that happen than it be thrown away. I always have a lot of unfinished projects that I take up and put down at various times. I’m sure I’ll be leaving some unfinished ones behind someday. Actually it’s been painful for me to look at a lot of my old work and archives for a long time because so many of the people that I lived that time of my life with are dead. Maybe now I’m finally able to start dealing with the memories. Also I felt like much of my old work was an embarrassing failure. Looking at it now, some of is indeed embarrassing but some of it is not so bad! A former abusive relationship made me feel like I should not do any art because I was no good and didn’t deserve to do it just because it was good for me and made me feel alive. There was a time when I wasn’t sure I was ever going to take it up again.
Here is a faux postage design I made as a computer graphic when I was a beginner at learning Photoshop. 1997.
My Mail Art name was Carolyn Substitute, my ‘zine was called the Lime Green News, and my faux postage was produced under the name “Lime Green Post”. I decided today to do an online search and see if I could find any references to my old Mail Art activities.
If you would like to explore this world I found the following:
stardust Memories Mail-aRt-Links and projects – bless this person for putting a link to my old web site on archive.org! I haven’t seen it in so long. I redesigned it in 1999 and I don’t think I looked at the old one since then because it made me so embarrassed!
Lime Green Evolution World of Art – 1997-1999 – My first web site, how I transitioned from analog networking to digital networking. Thinking back on it, printmaking class in 1987 led to rubber stamping, rubber stamping led to Mail Art, Mail Art led to ‘zines, ‘zines led to taking a class to get better at desktop publishing, which led to published a web site, that led to being a web designer, which led to doing marketing which led to me working on a marketing degree. No wonder I called my first web site Lime Green Evolution. And I didn’t even put in all the other tangents I followed along the way! I used to stay late a lot after my web design job ended at 5 pm to work on my personal web site and wait for the traffic to die down.
One of the things we are studying in my Mass Communications class is how people make media meaningful for themselves. Back in the ‘zine / grunge / Mail Art era we used to do a lot of collages, small press publications and mixed media projects. I’m sure there are still people out there doing these things and with technology we have a lot more options available. Most likely I’ll be exploring this in a future research project.
Edit: here is my new page on the International Union of Mail-Artists web site. I’ll be putting some old and new work there.
