Received this card and 3 others from Richard Canard in July / August 2015. I was abroad when he sent them to me, and I decided to publish the complete collection since it is so interesting.
Schedule for M.D. – by Ruud Janssen
This drawing was made for M.D. A collegue that works at the Radius College and will soon leave us to follow a new challenge. The drawing gives an idea of the complexity one deals with when working at a larger College and focusses on quality and the rules by and for others to maintain that.
Drawings 2011 by Ruud Janssen
When I draw I am always in drawing modus as I call it. I never know what will come out, but I know I want to create something. The essence is the creating. I make things. That might explain the text “Hope for new art is lost when you are in a museum”. You see so many things that are created that you don’t feel the need to create new things.
The drawing above has to do with the networking component of my art. In Mail-Art you share you art with others, and what you create goes straight to the one it is made for. I meet a lot of artists that aren’t connected to the network, and they have a hard time finding a ‘public’, someone who will react to what you see and make. In Mail-Art the network is your public. Only the Galleries and Musea are excluded from that network. No money is involved in the mail-art network other then the sending costs and the buying of materials to make your work.
But sometimes I am at the border of these two worlds. In the Art world you don’t just give away your art. You sell it, exhibit it, catalogue it, and build a portfolio. When I make drawings that aren’t made on envelope but on traditional thick paper. I tend to keep the drawings and pass on copies of the drawings. Somehow it is difficult to give away the things I create. I also don’t sell it. I just keep it as one big collection of which I am not sure where it will end up.
The IUOMA is also a network. Part of the mail-art network, but actually a large network of creative people working together in the mail-art tradition. Nowadays on a digital platform where the plans and productions are communicated too.
Outgoing mail-art 2003 – Painted Envelopes
In 2003 I was still living in Tilburg. I was painting envelopes on a daily basis, and sent thousands into the network. I made photo’s of all of them, lateron digitized them with a scanner. This blog is about a special series because the symbols can be interpreted in many ways, and these envelopes belong together although they are now all over the world. The one above To Anna Boschi (Italy) shows the setting quite well
The Background is a mixture of two colors that are integrated while wet. The envelopes were mostly sent to people I was doing the mail-interviews with. So a selected group received them. The one above to Clive Phillpot in UK, and the one below to G
Mail to Cascadia Artpost – USA
Mail-Art statements 2013 – by Ruud Janssen
Some new statements in 2013 where published as a .PDF file too. New ideas
Sliced a bit – drawing by Ruud Janssen
Artistamps or formal Postage?
Foam Letter collage 2012
Visual Poetry – May 2015
Three works made in May 2015. Om thick paper, recycling Stickers.
