Art Archives - Page 26 of 26

Collage correspondence, part 3: Michigan’s Upper Peninsula

July 20, 2012 by campbell Leave a Comment

There wasn’t much in the way of crowds after I crossed the Mackinac Bridge into Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Tahquamenon Falls State Park was lightly trafficked and well worth the visit, as was Painted Rocks National Lakeshore and Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park. Here are postcard collages from the area:

Postcard collage of "Da Yooper Hotel" — Dear Tracy — Greetings from Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula! I spent last night hanging around a campfire with a long-haul trucker and a hired hand from a dairy farm, although if his dreams come true he’ll be a male model instead. We made plans to run down the shore of Lake Superior to a lighthouse at 7:30 this morning, but come sun-up the only ones running were me and my dog Skillet. The trucker never wanted to run, and the farmhand was too hung over to move.

Natural American postcard collage - buff guy and binoculars-wielding outdoorsman — Hi Rob –Thanks for backing my Kickstarter project! I was at Pictured Rocks yesterday and the day before that. I didn’t see the rock in this picture, but I did meet an aspiring male model who works on a dairy farm and his long-haul trucker friend. I probably could have said “dairy” instead of “dairy farm,” because all dairies are farms. Anyway. It was the friendliest encounter I’ve ever had with drunk guys who woke me up with their stereo.

Postcard collage - Bird in front of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore — Hey James — Thanks for backing my Kickstarter project! Pictured Rocks was great, but you can’t really see the fantastic cliffs from land. And the tour boats aren’t dog- or wallet-friendly. But I did see a neat shipwreck. It was an old freight steamer. An aspiring male model’s friend was taking cell phone pictures of him walking on it at sunset. In a hundred years I hope models will pose on shipwrecked jet skis.

Postcard collage of Porcupine Mountain Wilderness State Park with "Forever Untamed" quote — Zach and family — Greetings from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula! I’m in Porcupine Mountain Wilderness State Park. Did you know there are mountains in Michigan? I didn’t! They aren’t very big, though. They are some of the oldest mountains in our country, and have had plenty of time to be worn down by erosion. They were formed about a billion years ago … more recently, Ojibwa Indians gave them their name because they look like giant porcupines when you view them from far away. It’s a neat place — I’m glad I visited!

Postcard collage of crowd running in front of Lake Superior with text "Choose Your Path" — Marieta — Greetings from Lake Superior! The sun just set and I’m listening to the waves slap against the rocky shore. Meanwhile my dog Skillet is curled up next to me, snoozing. The woods are chock full of noisy frogs and insects. It’s really peaceful. And after a long, hot day the air is finally cooling down and a breeze is picking up off the lake. Not much action, but lots going on.

Postcard collage of a yellow bird, Iowa's Driftless Area, and signs saying "Did You Know?" — Dear Johan — Hello! How are you? Thanks for backing my Kickstarter project. I hope you don’t mind if some of the text on this postcard is written under the cancellation stamp. I think that’s what the post office uses to void a stamp once you mail something. I should probably know my nomenclature if I’m going to do an entire Kickstarter project that relies on the US Postal Service. But the name for what it is sounds so redundant — a stamp cancellation stamp. The postage stamp and the cancellation stamp are really two different things, but they’re both called stamps. Anyway. This postcard has a huge caption up top, and a bar code down below. They eat up so much space. Also, I just noticed that this postcard has an ISBN number.* Wow! I’ve never seen that before. I’d look it up right away, but I can’t because I’m in the middle of Michigan’s Lake Superior shoreline, which is like the Bermuda triangle for cellular reception.

*I just realized that right after I complained about redundancy, I used the phrase “ISBN number.”

Collage correspondence, part 2: Michigan’s Lower Peninsula

July 18, 2012 by campbell Leave a Comment

After driving across the southern part of Wiconsin, with stops at Governor Dodge State Park, Devil’s Lake State Pak, and Kettle Moraine State Forest, I took a carferry across lake Michigan. It was a coal-powered steamship, the last such operating vessel on the Great Lakes, and it trailed brown clouds of rust belt pride all the way from Manitowoc to Ludington.

Michigan’s Lower Peninsula was a beautiful place — Nordhouse Dunes Wilderness and Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore were among my favorite places I visited that month. Here are some of the custom postcards I made in the Lower Peninsula:

Cranberries postcard collage - Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, Michigan — James — Sleeping Bear Dunes was one of the highlights of my trip — I spent four days and three nights there. The first couple days were spent under a low pressure system that dropped some rain and took its sweet time moving on, but the next two days were beautiful. Invasive zebra mussels have colonized Lake Michigan. They feed by filtering particles out of the water, so thanks to them the lake is crystal clear and brilliantly blue. It’s the most aesthetically pleasing form of ecological devastation I’ve ever seen.

Postcard collage of man in sleeping bag at Sleeping Bear Dunes — Hello Jenny! Thank you for backing my Kickstarter project! Sleeping Bear Dunes was a magical place. At first I thought it was home to thousands of regular-size sleeping bags filled with little men, but upon closer inspection I realized they were giant sleeping bags filled with regular-size men! The park ranger said they migrate there every year from the outskirts of Chicago. He also warned me not to get too close — they release Axe body spray when frightened.

Postcard collage of muscle car convertible and "natural lazers" — Dear Mackenzie — Did you know that the Michigan shoreline is home to America’s only 100% natural lazer light show? It’s true!* Every night in the summer, brilliant agates and the rare, endangered piping plover activate a symbiotic lazer spectacle designed to daze bugs that they catch and then eat. (Well, the plover eats them. The agate’s role is less well understood.) Today, the natural lazers sync up with Pink Floyd’s *The Wall*, which is blasted nightly from teenagers’ convertibles.

*Note: Is not actually true

Postcard collage of Michigan map, old car, and text reading "Function, Structure, and Symbol" — Hello Zee! Thanks for backing my Kickstarter project. This postcard reflects my experience crossing the Mackinac Bridge. Before you cross, the bridgemaster makes you write a 5,000-word essay on function, structure, and symbol. If you fail to impress him you can try again in two weeks or else drive all the way around Lake Michigan. I talked about cars in my essay and I think that made him happy, so he let me pass.

Postcard collage of man jumping Mackinac Bridge on skis, with text "RUDE" and "'70" — Dear Addis — Thanks for backing my Kickstarter project! This is the Mackinac Bridge. I drove over it and the crossing was completely uneventful. But! In 1989 a woman driving a 1987 Yugo stopped her car on the bridge, and a gust of wind blew her car over the 36-inch barricade and into the water. It’s true. I checked the citations on Wikipedia. No one has ever jumped it on skis, though; this is just a collage.

Collage correspondence, part 1: Iowa and Wisconsin

July 16, 2012 by campbell Leave a Comment

These postcard collages are some of the artwork that I created for this summer’s Kickstarter project, Greetings from the Back of My Van. Shown here is artwork from Iowa and Wisconsin. The messages that I sent on the back of the postcard are shown in the captions below each image. I’ve edited them slightly for content — that way you don’t have to read “Thanks for backing my Kickstarter project!” over and over and over again.

Postcard collage of dog in front of barge in Mississippi river in Iowa — Dear Edwin — I spent a few days at a friend’s cabin just north of Gutenberg, Iowa, watching barge traffic not unlike what you see here. Watching the barges float by was like a slow-motion thrill ride. There were also freight trains that would pass by on the river’s Wisconsin shore. The freight trains were less thrilling, but still fun to watch. You see a lot of good action movies where the bad guys are chasing each other atop moving trains, but you never see action movies with big budget barge chases. Probably this is because falling from a train is scaring, but dog paddling in funny-smelling water is not.

Postcard collage of Effigy Mounds, Iowa -- Speedboat, woman, and text saying "Farther, Deeper, and More Dangerous" — Dear Caroline — Effigy Mounds was one of the first stops on my trip through the Upper Midwest. Contrary to this postcard, it is not farther, deeper, or more dangerous. It’s close to where I grew up and lived for a time as an adult, and it’s peacefully located on dry land. It’s one of my favorite places in Iowa… I remember driving there with a friend one February after his dad died, but I’m not sure where I’m going with this anecdote, and even if I was sure, I’m out of room.

"Weird Winter" postcard collage from Wisconsin. Snowshoes and flying people. — Dear Mika — Greetings from the United States of America! I’m not sure what winters in Finland are like, but this is pretty typical for winters in Wisconsin. Of course, it was summer when I visited, but it still looked a lot like this. That’s because we spray the entire state with a giant aerosol can that shoots a gummy, plastic-based fake snow product. Every three years there is a reapplication, because the adhesive wears out over time and the fake snow starts to fall off. When that happens it is washed into rivers and flows out to sea. Eventually it all congregates in a garbage patch in the Pacific Ocean. One day all the fake snow will form a Christmas island; we’re all really excited.

History, culture, and shopping postcard collage — Dear Alexis — This is from Dodgeville, near Wisconsin’s Governor Dodge State Park. It’s a beautiful place, but a more accurate name would be “Tick City State Park.” This is a good year for ticks in the Midwest — no, wait, I mean it’s a bad year. You know. Anyway. Now that I’m writing this, I’m really worried that maybe you have a tick phobia or something and that this postcard will be really unpleasant to receive. If so, please know that I’m deeply, deeply sorry, but I’m in too deep to back out now. If it’s any consolation, please know that I too think ticks are totally gross and creepy. I should have written about my dog.

Postcard collage - Monitoring Florida Panthers 24/7 — Hello Danie — This postcard is from a place I drove past but didn’t visit on this trip. I went to the House on the Rock maybe five times during my high school and college years, and each time I went the management there did an increasingly better job of screwing it up. The HOTR was built by Alex Jordan, who Frank Lloyd Wright kicked out of his posse because he was threatened by his legitimacy. Jordan built a sweet house and filled his estate with cool stuff. There’s a letter from him to his visitors where he’s like, “The purpose of this house is to kick it,” and it’s like so true, but management is anti-cold-kicking it, but it’s hard to explain here.

Postcard collage of engineer in front of wind farm in Wisconsin — Dear Jamie — Wind farms are neat. I’ve never seen one on a postcard before. I appreciate that. But the phrase “Wisconsin is ranked in the top 20 wind-producing states” bothers me. [This assertion was written in the caption printed on the back of the postcard.] First, there are fifty states. It’s like saying, “Wisconsin is slightly above average, scoring a C+ in wind power.” Second, Wisconsin doesn’t produce the wind, it harness its mighty power. Anyway, sorry for all this complaining. Wisconsin is beautiful and windmills are a good thing. I hope your’e doing well.

Postcard collage of woman climbing up trees and deer in Wisconsin winter — Chris — Not a lot of people know this, but Wisconsin is a premier destination for the small but growing number of fans of deep winter tree-and-game climbing. It’s a new extreme sport that pits the fierceness of human athletic prowess against the snow-muffled stillness and serenity of nature. But this year we think the cat may be out of the bag. *The New York Times* just did a big story on it, and Katie Holmes is going to Wisconsin this winter to “climb some ungulates and just recover” from her divorce. Exciting times!

Car-themed postcards from the Upper Midwest

June 29, 2012 by campbell Leave a Comment

For some reason, cars just make collages better.

Postcard collage art of Michigan's Upper Peninsula and an old car — I decided that I didn't like the normal postcard that I started with, so I covered the whole thing with a map of Michigan and went from there. The text is taken from an old architecture book. Sometimes the German version of a word is better than the English version of a word.

Postcard collage art of a Dodge Challenger technical drawing — "Drowning Machines" is a colloquial term for roller dams, which are difficult for boaters to see from upriver. That's Lake Itasca and the Mississippi headwaters in the background. The mostly-hidden line of rocks marks the end of the lake and the beginning of the river. A friend's response upon seeing this: "Look at you... all post-modern and shit..."

Postcards from the Upper Midwest

June 21, 2012 by campbell Leave a Comment

Hello to all my Kickstarter project supporters! I hope you’ll forgive the dearth of earlier content on this site — this brand new and recently constructed website is in something of a gestational state right now. I’ll be using this space to post my collages, drawings, and postcards from the road this summer. Anything else you’d like to see here?

Right now I’m sitting next to a big stack of postcards that I made as part of my Kickstarter project, Greetings from the Back of My Van. I scanned a few of those postcards this morning, and want to share them here.