Barney Owl, Spike Prickly

Love and the OCCP

I've been thinking lately about my adopted dad and his love of greeting cards. Besides having lunch together and discussing the books we were reading Dad and I would often go to a bookstore. After browsing a while but before paying for his new books Dad would ask me to stop by the greeting card section with him. There he and I would look at cards, show them to each other and laugh. He always chose two or three cards from the racks before we headed to the bookstore register.

I remember asking him why he did this. “Cards in the mail are are one of the many ways love is made tangibly real.” He replied.

That made an impression on me.

Tactile tangibility is one of the things I enjoy most about making things with my hands, painting, drawing in sketchbooks or on boards, and writing in notebooks by hand at the end of a day I can point to a physical something and say “That exists because I woke up today”.

For example all week, 10 or so minutes each morning during breakfast, I worked on this sketchbook page. Every morning there was a bit of progress that I could see and touch if the paint and ink were dry.

I began my sketchbook page by writing the quote by

Jena Ball

and proceeded each day to add to the characters and colors until my sketchbook pages looked like this.

Slowly, slowly and easy does it… No grand expectations. Time plus incremental efforts, patience with myself, a willingness to mess it up, then do with it what I can, share it however I can - without seeking perfection - allowing it to emerge as itself whatever that may be. And I let it be an expression of love made real.

This week in a locally owned stationary shop, Eryngium Paperterie, I found an antique, lightly used, small address book.

I love the old fashioned illustrations - a rotary phone!! Look at that! 👇

And I love the sentiments about friendship!

Times in the USA being as crazy as they are, my wife

J. L. Sullens

and I have been talking about reviving our on again off again mail-art project. Finding the address book seems serendipitous.

In 2001, after 9/11, and during most of the time George W Bush was president things in the US were difficult so we sent mail-art cards to friends. During the pandemic of 2020 we sent a series of cards to our friends….

Sending cards really is a fun tangible way to love people!

We've decided to call our new mail-art card project “Our Community Card Project” or “OCCP”. I carved a stamp out of a block of rubber.

Here's a collection of some of the stamps we might use on our cards. Yes, some of these stamps like the “mail art network” were some we used in former difficult times. Art, art supplies and friends endure!

I thought about using the stamps on my new address book… but decided instead to just slip the 5 x 7 inch piece of paper inside the book.

Over the last week I picked one of my owl characters “Barney Owl” and drew, with a dip pen and ink, eight versions of Barney on postcard paper.

As we have time we'll address the cards and send them to friends.

Here’s a related story from my handwritten notebook.

Barney Owl often needed strong coffee to get through the night shift. The local coffee shops made their rent on coffee sales to Barney who, unbeknownst, was very important to the local economy. But coffee wasn't a thing to be discussed with other owls. Too many owls prided themselves on being awake all night without a need for stimulants. "Whooo needs it?" They'd say. The local economy and Barney that's whooo.

As I worked this week on my sketchbook page, mentioned above, with the porcupine and friends (I'm still practicing drawing porcupines, they're challenging to paint…) I also thought of a story and wrote it in my notebook. Here's what I wrote (and shared on Notes)

Contrary to the common perceptions of porcupines one of Spike Prickly's favorite things to do is to visit with friends and give them happiness balloons.

I hope your weekend contains contacts with friends and many tangible forms of love.

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