artistamps07

commemorative envelope by David Dellafiora
Field Study Meeting and Artistamps Show January 6, 2007

from left to right: David Dellafiora, The Shopping Trolley Gallery, Alan Turner, Dawn Redwood (oh! the miracles of Photoshop) Peter Netmail phoning Dawn who was delayed, Angela Netmail, Eammon Kirwan ( another miracle as before), Bernd Reichert, Lisa Katzenstein, Sue Vallance, Jo Ann Hill, Steve Parsons and Geoff Stoker.
It was gray and windy and wet, on the Millennium Bridge that Saturday midday. Even so, an intrepid band of Mail Artists of native and foreign origin gathered hopefully to see the Artistamps rise above London on the tails of two silver balloons.
	Not so, the balloons promptly flew away from David's hands, took a dive and finished on the river. Although the balloons had been carefully calibrated with just the right quantity of stamps to be able to rise easily, the stamps got wet in the rain and the added weight of the water was enough to ground them, or more accurately, river them. Even so the work of so many artists was duly appreciated and admired thanks to the Artistamps Album, which was on display at the Pub where we all gathered for lunch afterwards. And the balloons kept going backwards and forwards in the Thames, between the Millennium and Blackfriars Bridges, with the in and out tides, which had a certain poetry of its own.


At the pub Peter Netmail read an obituary to Dawn Redwood, left, who having celebrated her 70^th birthday this summer gave him this original idea. The rationale is that Peter had recently written obituaries for several Mail Artists and he felt it was a pity that the recipients were not there to hear them. So in this case the obituary was delivered long before Dawn goes to that big Mailing Room in the sky.	Peter, commemorative tombstone and Dawn, who, in the words of Sally Bowles, 'was the happiest corpse I ever seen'	After the meal Peter threw into he Thames the tombstone with the names of the Mail Artists who passed away during 2006 where it went to join the two balloons, still floating there. It was a great meeting as always and I have to remind me of it a bright yellow plastic box from the German post office that somehow crossed the Channel and found itself on my table at the pub.