MinXus Mail Bag: A time for meditation from Art Nation Karen Champlin (Highland Park, Illinois, USA)

Mail-art by Karen Champlin (Highland Park, Illinois, USA)

Miss Karen is a dearest friend. In terms of the visual poetry you see in the mail-art network today, her contributions are immeasurable and, as far as we’re concerned, largely unacknowledged. Of course, that doesn’t matter probably, as Miss Karen enjoys the esteem of many every day and enjoys even more the company of genuine friends. She lives in and creates a true Art Nation.

She sent this great postcard-size piece a while back that we are pleased to display here at the Mink Ranch. Miss Karen took some months off from the network and then returned recently with some truly powerful new pieces synthesizing a number of her classic styles, bringing new energy, and further deepening her spiritual quest, which many of us have been privileged to follow.

Miss Karen’s entrance to the world of visual poetry, asemics, and haptics began circa 2010 with very distinctive assemblage pieces. The basic style and form of those assemblages can be seen in the work above. Her work has always had haptic qualities; she just became more aware that touch was part of the interactive process with the recipient. Language slowly began to creep into her work, becoming amalgams of text and image.

She has become a master of layering, often using stamping techniques as you can see above. Karen’s layering techniques have had a profound impact on many of the visual poets you will find here at the Mink Ranch. Her discovery of asemics opened even more new doors; she has produced a wide variety, notably a series of glyphs. Many of her asemics seem like ancient, sacred texts.

Miss Karen has also used the psycho-analytic powers of image, found text, and asemics to delve bravely into the waters of her own unconscious mind, which some would contend is our shared unconscious mind. This work – deeply moving, raw, and honest – we have named Confessional Vispo due to its similarities to the work of the Confessional Poets.

It is a joy to have received this work from Karen, to meditate upon it and remember watching her work evolve in these past years, and to consider how much it has touched us and changed us.