Guest Post: Liz Knox on Micah Lexier

"This year, I’m a part of Undecimals, a mail art group where 12 artists each select a month of the year, and on your month you send an edition to the other 11 members. Each month of the year you receive a work in the mail aside from the one month when you send something to the other participants.

Micah Lexier was the artist for May 2016; I was very excited to open a package from him. Inside were stamped addressed envelopes for the 10 other artists in the group, each with the return address from Micah Lexier c/o me and my address. The envelopes arrived with a letter asking me to pop them in the mail and noting that they were each empty and had been printed at home. It was so exciting to receive this and realize that I had to immediately let it go and would soon receive replacements. It was only when I started receiving my envelopes from Micah c/o the other 10 artists that I realized for each participant he selected a unique envelope, a unique font, a unique stamp; and I could tell which had been caught in some rain or under the care of a rough postal worker. Lexier is known for works that are rigorously self-referential and this work is no exception."


http://undecimals.ca/
http://lizknox.ca/home.html
http://micahlexier.tumblr.com

Lucien Durey | Hamsterley Farm Water Tower (view from Haro Road)

Lucien Durey
Hamsterley Farm Water Tower (view from Haro Road)
Vancouver, Canada: Self-published, 2015
silver gelatin contact print
5 x 7"
Edition of 11


"For Hamsterley Farm Water Tower, I turned a Hamsterley Farm strawberry jam tin into a pinhole camera, poking a small hole into the face of the tin using a sewing needle. With the homemade camera and 4 x 5” film, I traveled to Saanich, BC, to document the jam tin’s referenced site–its water tower now a recognized heritage structure–in an attempt to reveal something of the object to itself."

- Lucien Durey

Last year I was part of a group of 12 artists (Gina Badger, Maura Doyle, Annie Dunning, Lucien Durey, Maggie Groat/Jimmy Limit,  Jesse Harris, Tomoyo Ihaya, Hannah Jickling/Helen Reed, J.J. Kegan McFadden, Andrea Pinheiro, and Emiliano Sepulveda) who each produced an editioned work sent it in the mail to the other members. The project, initiated by Durey, is called Undecimals.  Hamsterley Farm Water Tower was the November project, which I had neglected to post.

The 2016 Undecimals group includes Vanessa Brown + Mike Bourscheid, Patrick Cruz, Lucien Durey, Blair Fornwald, Maggie Groat + Jimmy Limit, Lyndl Hall, Letch Kinloch, Liz Knox, Micah Lexier, Kegan McFadden, Andrea Pinheiro and Aislinn Thomas.

Undecimals

Undecimals is mail art group that invites twelve artists a year to each produce a work in an edition of eleven copies or more. Each artist is assigned a month and the participants receive artworks in the mail for the full calendar year.

The 2015 group includes myself, Gina Badger, Maura Doyle, Annie Dunning, Lucien Durey
Maggie Groat + Jimmy Limit, Jesse Harris, Tomoyo Ihaya, Hannah Jickling + Helen Reed, Kegan McFadden, Andrea Pinheiro and Emiliano Sepulveda.

Past participants include Lyndl Hall, Julia Anne Goodman, Tiziana La Melia, Kerri Reid, Leah Rosenberg, Aislinn Thomas and Momoko Usami.

For more information, visit the website here.

Dave Dyment | No You Don’t Bring Me Flowers Anymore

Dave Dyment
No You Don’t Bring Me Flowers Anymore
Toronto, Canada: Self-published, 2015.
Audio CD, 3:19
Edition of 25 signed and numbered copies

Undecimals is mail art group that invites twelve artists a year to each produce a work in an edition of eleven copies or more. Each artist is assigned a month and the participants receive artworks in the mail for the full calendar year. This year I took part, alongside Gina Badger, Maura Doyle, Annie Dunning, Lucien Durey, Maggie Groat + Jimmy Limit, Jesse Harris, Tomoyo Ihaya, Hannah Jickling + Helen Reed, Kegan McFadden, Andrea Pinheiro and Emiliano Sepulveda.

The project I prepared didn't pan out, so I was late with my work, but (with the pile below as evidence) the replacement project was mailed out this morning, with a little over a week left in 2015.

It's a hand-made CD 'digipack' containing a three and a half minute turntable duet and a nine minute narrated powerpoint presentation. The latter tells the story of the origin of Neil Diamond/Barbra Streisand ballad, which began life as the theme song for a failed Norman Lear sitcom, and then a mash-up made by a radio program director for his wife, whom he was divorcing.

For the duet, two copies of the 7" single are played simultaneously, manually on two turntables, attempting to stay synchronized.

Listen to the audio track here: https://vimeo.com/147770246

Dave Dyment | Thirteen Serious Considerations

Dave Dyment
Thirteen Serious Considerations
Toronto, Canada: Self-published, 2019
13 pp.,11 x 16 cm., loose leaves
Edition of 25

Thirteen Serious Considerations borrows it’s name and format from a little known mail-art project by Dick Higgins, published in 1978.

The hand-stamped cards are excerpts from a video called Pop Quiz, which collects every question from the lyrics in my personal music library. A recent iteration contains over two thousand questions and is over four hours long. A previous sampling was published as a bookwork by Paul+Wendy Projects in 2010.

Produced as part of the Undecimals mail art project, which also included Jimmy Limit, Maggie Groat, Liz Knox, Lyndl Hall, Kara Uzelman, and many others.

Maura Doyle | Beaver Chip

Maura Doyle
Beaver Chip 
Ottawa, Canada: Self-published, 2014
stoneware with underglaze, beaver chip
Edition of 12

Produced as the first Undecimals work of 2015 (see below).

Visit the artist's website, here.

The April and June entries (May is delayed) for the Undecimals mail art group. By Annie Dunning and Tomoyo Ihaya, respectively.