Artistamps

Artistamps you ask?

The above is a cyber stamp only, no hard copies available.

I first got turned on to artistamps way back in the 70's by an artist called William Rowe. He had produced a book called Surreal Stickers and Unreal Stamps. At the time I was collecting stickers and his were out of this world. I made fun jewerly with them and decorated envelopes...little did I know in the future I'd be making them too.

Artistamps are miniatures, owing to their size, but they aren't "miniatures" in the traditional sense because they are infact smaller and often not one of a kind, although they can be.

Artistamps are often stickers. We stick them. They come with dry adhesive or in crack and peel format, or we add glue by hand to make it stick. As such, they are stickers. But they aren't stickers, because, although they are stuck, their form, symbols and meaning set them into another catagory.

Artistamps are stamps: they are intended to be "like" postage stamps in form, symbol and meaning. But they aren't postage stamps because no "macro-nation", to borrow a term from the world of imaginary countries, accepts them as legal, which is okay since most of us don't want them to be accepted as such.

Artistamps are cindarellas [philatilest term for non-postage stamp stamps]. But they aren't cindarellas, because, I believe, for most of their creators they are a form of artistic expression AND are intended to be seen as postage stamp like, not sticker like.

But by discussing them this way I've made some assumptions about what "artistamps" are: I've assumed they are small and that they stick and that they are like postage stamps...

And some of us were making artistamps before we'd even heard of artistamps, so were those early works REALLY "artistamps"?

What I'm coming to is that to define them, to know them when we see them, we have to have guidelines, or "rules" to distinguish them from other little pieces of art or creativity. So when we discuss artistamps on this board, we all have bought into a certain set of rules that define what artistamps are. We may not all agree on every single rule which is to be included, but there is agreement....

Artistamps are:

generally small, usually postage stamp sized like governmental postage stamps in form, more or less according to the designer's whim/intent often stick, but not always are created as singles to be stuck, or are created as sheets to be admired can be considered art, or play can be any 2d medium can be one of a kind, or a limited edition can be perforated, or not ultimately, each of us has determined for ourselves what an artistamp is based on our observations of the artistamps of others and real postage stamps AND have gone on to break certain "rules" that didn't suit our particular expression/media/desire at the time.

We also redefine what an artistamp is every time we sit down to make one. And it is this glorious diversity in stamps from within our own oeuvres and from artist to artist that keep me coming back to artistamps as an artistic/creative challenge.

David Locicero from the AML group

"Thousands of people all over the world are using stamps as a form of creative expression"says Ed Higgins, III, a New York artist who has made 380 different issues of Doo Da Post ,stamps bearing everything
from whirling dervishes to dancing tomatoes.

Seattle artist Carl Chew designs
many of his elaborate Triangle
Post stamps on computer, and his
laser printer prints out stunning
images in brilliant color -- ranging
from photos of himself adorning
Romanian castles to ziggurat-bearing
elephants or ducks wearing party
hats.

My artistamps are created using computer graphics and then printed out at high resolution and then color copied in editons of 50-100. At this point I have not tried gummed stock but plan on it in the future. If you too create artistamps, I love to trade! And of course I do offer them for sale.

AMLPost, created for the first year anniverary of the Artistamp Mailing list online. Signed limited edition of 75.

Flight of The Fay, signed limited edition of 40.

Spirit Dance Post, signed limitied edition of 40.

Don't Fence Me In Post, signed limited edition of 75. Original created for a page in the Santa Fe Book Arts Group Colaborative Book,2000.

MoodMod, signed limited edition of 70.

SoulPost, signed limitied edition of 75.

Also not available yet.

Love Post, Happiness, Fate, Bug Post

(these are all out of print)

For more information on these and other stamps contact
Dragonfly Dream at
dragonflyatdragonflydream.com (you know, replace the word at with the @ symbol)

Dragonfly Dream
766 Meadowbrook rd

Brattleboro,VT

The Olathe Poste

Local Post Collectors Society

Rubberstamp Museum-Artistamp Gallery

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