A Book for Marie. Cheryl Penn/Marie Wintzer

A Book for Marie

Cheryl Penn(South Africa)/Marie Wintzer (Japan)

Unique Book made from the Mail Art of Marie Wintzer from paper collected and posted from Japan. Marie has managed through her correspondence and photographs to create quite a surreal vision of Japan - it even has a place called “booktown”.  The book is handmade from paper garnered from various shops and markets in Japan, and using it was - well, difficult.  But what was the point if it just lay in a drawer? I created sewn pockets into which her Mail Art is inserted.  Some pieces are cryptic, some are fun, some tell stories.  There are postcards, notes, letters, drawings, small books, and photographs only Marie could have taken.  Our correspondence goes back to 2010 - that’s many Tokyo Moons ago.  Cherry Blossom is travelling another path now, but the places this particular fork in her journey took me are very precious.

A Curious Dream - Cheryl Penn

A Curious Dream

Unique Book accordion bound.  320cm  long by 21cm high, begun in 2011, finished in 2014.

I began this book in 2011 while in a flurry of idea implosion and excessive book activity. Quite a few books were begun during this time, but with no deadlines in sight, they lay, waiting completion.  The exhibition of  An Encyclopedia of Everything and Other Matters was the perfect excuse to go through these to see if any were worth finishing. This certainly was. The curious dream begins with “This place gave her the creeps. Everyone looked like half something. Like De Moreau had had a go. And there were Twelve Monkeys suffering from vertigo. The horn man said: What are you staring at”?

REICHERT, Bernd (Belgium) Voyages of Discovery - Japan

Voyages of Discovery - Japan

Unique Book dated 2012: Colophon: “Reflecting on a black hole in the toilet of the (?).  Impressions from a journey through Japan in May June 2012. For Cheryl, Bernd”.   I remember the wait for this book Bernd had said he had made for me - “a portrait of a city, portrait of a movement”.  I have quite a few of Bernd’s unique handmade books, including The World is a Town and 100 billion suns. From Bernd’s website - “born in 1960 on a rainy day behind the Iron Curtain. Tried to escape Germany after the reunification in direction Pacific Ocean, but stranded at the shores of surrealist Belgium. Lives there in Brussels as a happy economic refugee creating artist books and object boxes. As a printmaker I specialized in woodcuts and wood intaglio prints.

Robert Rehfeldt showed him a mail art archive around 1985, but it took until 1992 until he joined the network”. He is also the Editor of the assembling magazine “Bizarre Cities”.

This unique book is created using collage, drawing and text - a real work of art and one I would have found very difficult to part with.  Having not been there, but loving the minimalism of Japan, set in a maximum of crowded bussinism (my mental view of Japan), this book echoes a mental voyage of discovery I have had on Japan.  See: http://www.bernd-reichert.net

Lest We Forget Elizabeth - Cheryl Penn

Lest We Forget Elizabeth

Colophon: Unique artists book, accordion bound, lazer print Photostats from Harm Done series, collage, drawing with pencil, charcoal, water colours, stamping, stencils dated 2009.  This book is still hard to bear. The story of Elizabeth Fritzel is one of those moments when one looks into the heart of a man that is darkness itself. I wonder who ever thinks of her now, but I hope she and her children are now living a life worth living.

Dequesnes, Christian-Edzire (France)

Dequesnes, Christian-Edzire (France)

BAZAR BLEU nuit/12.12 Invisible Man Blues / Le moulin des Loups no 6  - hivers 2015/2016

Christian Edziré Déquesnes, publishers journals, periodical publications, chapbooks and is also a poet, writer and singer.  Through John Bennett (USA), Christian contacted me in December last year abut my poetry. I was hugely pleased to be included in one of these volumes, and will most certainly be sending a series of chapbooks in exchange. The music on his blog is a great listen, sometimes an unusual listen!  See: http://lemoulindesloups.blogspot.co.za