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The following is a cut-and-paste message from Mail Art Messageboard:
Author: Bill Wilson (---.proxy.aol.com)
Date: 10-07-01 17:14
An announcement for a show, California College of Arts and Crafts, San Francisco Campus, October 12th---December 8th, Logan Gallery, 1111 Eighth Street, EXTRA ART, A Survey of Artists' Ephemera. The show is curated by Steven Leiber, who once printed a commercial catalogue of Johnsoniana which simulated the North Carolina catalogue by Richard Craven in the 1970s. The list of artists includes Yves Klein, the great vaudevillian of art, who designed probably the earliest postage stamp made by an artist; Lawrence Weiner, who is interviewed about Johnson in the film "Connections"; General Idea; Eleanor Antin; Bruce Conner; Donald Evans; Daniel Spoerri; and Robert Watts---to mention a few of the names of possible interest here. Perhaps someone who can see the show will post a description and/or analysis. The names are so tempting--George Herms, for example. After the night Ray Johnson poured honey down the side of George Herms, then licked it off, George draw a picture of the scene which he mailed to Ray, who mailed it to me. Ray was upset that evening because a man had just bought ten of his collages for $100.00 each, had then asked Ray to throw in an extra collage for free. When Ray came out of the building, where I was waiting as driver of the getaway car, he put his head in my lap and sobbed at the humiliation. When we reached Diana di Prima's apartment on Cooper Square, where George Herms was staying, Ray positioned a five dollar bill in an ashtray and set it on fire. Then he poured the honey on George, who was not wearing a shirt. He was constructing a haiku perhaps, with clear ephemeral gestures, but turning it on a rhyme: honey rhymes with money. Other names--Richard Tuttle, Cy Twombly and Nam June Paik--point toward artists who were never primarily mailartists, but who played Ray's games with him. Ray sometimes burned his collages in Cy Twombly's fireplace, where Cy sometimes burned his sketches. I have no ideas or images of what is in this show, but it is bound to effervesce and vibrate, bouncing as it does from Ay-O to Yoko Ono. I would not myself include in a show Carl Andre, unless his poem from the early 1970s were available:
MAN'S LAUGHTER
MANSLAUGHTER [Copyright: Carl Andre]
Since this show includes the Guerrilla Girls, and Adrian Piper, feminist perspectives at least will be on record. I have no idea how much of this show is mailart, but do know that a few of the artists had relayed from Ray to me an item on which Ray had written "Please send to." Thus artists, geographically separated, were linked by their participations in the network begun by Ray Johnson.
My feelings about that network in these discouraging times
are conveyed by Samuel Beckett:
"...in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't
go on, I'll go on."
(end of message)
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Fluxlisters:
I plan on seeing this show, but probably not 'til November.
As most of you know, Bill Wilson is May Wilson's son. Saw a show about the correspondences between the two a couple of months ago in Santa Rosa, CA - also viewed a couple of videotapes. Fascinating. Got a tip from Harley on a great Ray Johnson catalogue out of Canada, info. follows:
Here's the book info.
Dear Patricia,
Thank you for contacting us regarding the Ray Johnson book.
Yes, we do have it available at $25.00, excluding shipping charge/tax.
You can send us an order via fax or e-mail and prepayment
make payable to: RAM publications; by check or VISA/Mastercard.
If you like us to give you an exact amount due, please
send us your shipping address and how many copies you are
interested in purchasing. We will get back to you on the exact
charges
and you can mail us a check or send us your credit card info./exp.
date
Thanks again for contacting us.
Look forward to hearing from you soon.
Best Regards,
Juli
RAM Publications + Dist.
2525 Michigan Ave., Bldg.#A2
Santa Monica, CA 90404
310.453.0043
310.264.4888 fax
It's called "RAY JOHNSON How Sad I am Today" from an exhibit curated
by Michael Morris and Sharla Sava, Morris and Helen Belkin Art Baller,
University of British Columbia. Unlike the Wexner catalogue,
it has a definite focus on his mail art and is chock-a-block with illustrations
of same.
Good reading, too, but you'll still get a ton out of it if you just
look at the pictures; i.e., read and view Ray's mail art including typed
and written correspondences.. They also have one chapter devoted
solely to the correspondence of Ray Johnson and May Wilson. Well
worth the price!!! And
I'm not sure how many copies they published.
As they say in N'Orleans -
Sauce' Bon!! (Be sweet),
PK
