N. Collage made with Mark's artwork that helped give me the idea for this show

When I got out Mark's old artwork and my old artwork late last summer, I was inspired by some faux postage drawings he made based on computer graphics that I had made combined with primitive masks and other enigmatic symbols. I decided to try making some new faux postage designs inspired by these pieces which were already a collaboration of sorts between the two of us.

I made the collage you see above for my art journal using one of Mark's computer printouts of a mask as a background for a two-page spread. In the lower left corner is an image of Mark that is from a day in 1997 when we posed for each other in psuedo-military clothing to use in collages. Here is one of my projects from the class in which I learned how to use Photoshop and make my first web page. The assignment was to make a parody of a tabloid newspaper front page. Besides scanning the resulting photos for use in computer graphics, I also copied them on a photocopier in two different sizes to use in black and white collages.

I scanned the art journal collage and used it as texture in Photoshop to experiment with blending it with the faux postage image.

The result is a digital image only, it hasn't been printed yet. Once an artist has made a digital faux postage design, it can be printed and displayed as a sheet of stamps or traded and displayed as individual stamps. If printed at a small enough size, such stamps can be put on mail alongside legitimate postage stamps as either decoration or as conceptual art, or both.

This was my first time making faux postage in quite awhile, and I was really excited. There were lots of feelings and ideas pulling at me to get back into Mail Art so I decided to get myself a profile on the International Union of Mail Artists web site (IUOMA), put my new stamp design in a photo album and to start uploading some images of any old work that I was not too embarassed to show.

Getting out the old artwork, some of which I had not seen in 20 years, was painful in some ways and I was exhausted for a couple of weeks as memories and guilt over unfinished projects washed over me.

Things to be grateful for:

• I finished some old projects and let go some of the guilt from not finishing them.
• I let myself off the hook to a great degree for having unfinished projects realizing that it's part of the process that every creative person goes through and just because some people look down on you for having unfinished work it doesn't mean it's wrong or bad.
• By treating Mark's old and unfinished art work the way I would like mine to be treated when I'm gone, I faced the reality of mortality that we all face in a healthier way.