Tom Foolery, Spoofing Around

Another great postcard from Steve of Montana. This is an art/advertising postcard. It was sent to Steve recently as an advertisement for the Tom Foolery art exhibition at the Missoula (Montana) Art Museum of Art. Foolery's satiric and sometimes surreal dioramas poke fun at life, art and commerce, among other things. Many of dioramas are small and some are very small. Foolery created his first miniature diorama 33 years ago in the dashboard of his Nash Rambler before moving to the cavities of Kodak Brownie Cameras, theatre flood light frames and more recently vending machines. The postcard image here is titled, Bone Cowboy, 2006. You can find out more about Foolery's art and the exhibit at the Missoula Art Museum here. The exhibit runs until May 9, 2010. A short review of Foolery's work is here.

A Halloween Muse

This postcard shows a 1st-century Roman fresco of a frightful muse. I wonder if Stephen King, American author of a multitude of horror classics, is acquainted with her? We've all heard that one's muse is an inconvenient companion, coming and going at whim, yet I might have second thoughts about calling for her help to write my blog if she regularly arrived carrying a decapitated head.

The postcard is from the J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, California, circa 1980.

In Another Life

Echos of Tienanmen Square.

This postcard's photo was taken by Michelle Barnes-Ness and printed by Alaskan Postcard Classics on environmentally friendly inks and paper. The card was a gift along with 24 other cards from friends Jan and Rick. They are serious garage sale folks and found the cards at an ongoing garage sale in Fairbanks.

The caption on the reverse side said this particular moose charged, kicked the locomotive, then jumped off the tracks. Fortunately for this moose the train was not moving. Usually their orneriness earns them a trip to oblivion.

This year more than 300 moose will be hit by trains in Alaska. That is not so much a prediction but a figure based on average strikes for the past 25 years. If the snow is heavy, more will die. Even though moose can weight up to 1,600 pounds, a freight train with several thousand tons of mass moving at 40 miles per hour with a steel cattle guard easily wins the battle of nature verses machine. It takes a fully loaded freight train nearly a mile to stop. Moose use the tracks to avoid floundering in the deep snow -- which in some areas can be eight feet deep. One year a train on a 712-mile round trip collided with 24 moose. The only good to come of this carnage is that some of the moose killed by trains are savaged for local food banks.

Collage Postcard Art of Diane Glass

Northern California artist, Diane Glass was kind enough to let me post one of her original postcard art works today. She sent this card with some others in a beautiful greeting card with a note related to my blog this spring. We stop in to each other's blogs now and then and offer a comment or two.

You can find her blog Artstanding Stranger: Art with a Heart, here.

Diane's work speaks for itself but whimsical seems to suggest the tone for a lot of her work. Out of the clutter that is her studio, she selects with great skill the pieces necessary to satisfy her muse. The results are subtle pieces of art which, I think, transcends their own medium.

The collage postcard card above extols personal freedom as a key to having fun. "Fun is the ability to be free to be yourself," it says. How difficult that can be, but, as her piece shows, there are clues to this freedom of spirit. The card suggests there are tickets ("Good for One Admission") bold clothing, bare feet -- no doubt to walk on holy ground, and angel wings made of natural leaves. We also notice the background is chosen to accentuate one's attributes. Is this not an illustration for loosening up and putting some jazz in our step.

Diane does a lot of ATC or Artist Trading Cards or Art Cards. You can see examples of some of these at her blog or at Flikr here. Her recent Orange Scarf is fantastic. She also does jewelry. You can purchase Diane's work at Esty. I've got my eye on some of those Victorian Steampunk necklaces she recently made. I think one would look divine on my wife's neck.