Aida's Musings

EF Higgins

S Lackner

A day deep in the Archive of Ginny Lloyd’s “Gina Lotta Post Artistamp Museum and Archive” was a real treat and a respite for me. Adding to bulging binders the newly submitted pages of these hybrid creations gave me a rare glimpse into this spin off of an established art form. Postage stamps have long been collectible for their design and artistry. They have the power to commemorate big events and personalities in a small format. These Artistamps, likewise are precious and collectable compositional gems, a tiny showcase of the “elements of design” which I can still visualize lining the upper borders of my seventh grade art class: line, form, color, direction, texture, value, unity…what was the eighth? Oh yes, repetition!

Topel

Having majored in design ( I used my subscription to Graphis magazine as a lifeline into the world of visual ideas while I raised a family and worked at an early career in fine art), I feel a strong connection to the graphic quality of the imagery. Various illustrative techniques are employed and shrinky-dinked down to a scale that we find all too familiar in a world where the Technicolor widescreen of old has deferred to the iphone screen…it IS a mad mad world after all. Collage, typography, kinetic art, graffiti, satire, order and chaos, the beautiful and horrific, it’s all there…in miniature. But, in the end, It is the the little holes that seal the deal!...Perfection is in the perforations.

Alexander and Natalie

Watts and Renee

Indeed, I met Ginny Lloyd over an antique perforator that she acquired with a grant from “Women Supporting the Arts”. I was able to finally toy with the thing after a lecture that Ginny gave at the Martin County Arts Council in Stuart, Florida. I made mincemeat of a Canadian five dollar bill and a gum wrapper as well.( I did not come as prepared as I should have but improvised with the contents of my purse). 

Darlene A

I encountered a link to a potent video on Ginny’s website. A woman demonstrates a perforation technique utilizing tiny, sharpened, hollow brass tubing, inserted like a needle into the sewing machine. I flashed back to my earliest sewing memories where I imagined myself driving along the paper templates which traced the stitch path; straight ways and into the curves, the exhilaration of acceleration!  To know I have the stuff to perforate my own artistamps in the women’s corner of the “Manroom” is empowering.

In Artistamps the perforations can be tidy boxes separating identical images or they can dissect a larger image at random angles. This rampant deconstruction, “any thing goes” mentality found amid the pages of the Gina Lotta Post Artistamp Museum keeps me turning pages with surprise and delight.

Caution, Artists at Play.

Ginny is working on the fifth volume of her Artistamps catalogue. They are also posted here on the museum’s website: http://artistampmuseum.blogspot.com/

Note: Images are of a few of Aida's favorites in the collection.