Is There Money for Artists?

Considering reports of federal funding cuts for humanities programs, I explore what’s available in Pacific Coast and (U.S.) for and . In the future I’ll also consider mutual aid resources: https://jeanvengua.substack.com/p/is-there-money-for-artists

Ink brush drawing of old brick 3-story apartment building in San Francisco Chinatown. There is a red awning on the first floor with the sign "May Shun Trading Co."

Dear Sister . . .

Check out my latest Issue : A 1953 letter from one sister to another. Also, collaborative and community-based art, Lyla June, Andre 3000, Lisa Angulo Reid, Vida Cruz-Borja, Ursula LeGuin, and more! Intersections of history, art, and culture.

A “Stamp” stamp

I finally bought a stamp pad, so I carved a rough little “stamp” stamp that is basically a frame for whatever I want to draw and put into it. In this case, I tried out some little portraits, a question mark, a rabbit (or kangaroo?) and a mouse deer. The mouse deer has fangs, and it’s a mythical trickster in the Philippines. I also carved an even rougher little “IUOMA” stamp (International Union of Mail Artists).

It has been difficult for me to get moving on even the most simple art projects this month. So I have to celebrate when I do any little thing . . .

Little Changes in a Big-Change World

I finally incorporated my domain in this website, so the URL is more streamlined and I have a few more options. It took several days for this change to “propagate,” as they say. But here it is. Now, after more than a decade of being an on-and-off WordPress user, I’m finally learning how to use the dang WordPress Reader, which feels like social media from the early 2000s. I notice that WordPress has enabled paid subscriptions. Not sure what to think of that. But I feel like if I’m finally going to commit to being here, I might as well learn this platform like I should’ve long ago.

I also have a new post up on Eulipion Outpost (Substack), entitled “Pasalubong, Pesos, and Pining for Home.”

Above: Philippine pesos from previous decades. Photo by Jean Vengua.

In the meantime, it feels like civilization is undergoing a reset. I’m anxious about it, just like everyone else. Yet, I just keep chugging on . . .

Eat the Sun

Ink on watercolor postcard. I’ve switched from using mostly pen to now using a brush, which has really loosened up my line.

Mail Art in Latin America

Listening to a talk by Vanessa Davidson and Florencia Bassano on mail art in Latin America. There are some ideas here that I’m thinking about. I’m using this blog also to archive some media that is meaningful to me.

Mail art was “concerned with the mechanics of communication in general, [and] with aesthetic communication in particular.”

See also Edgardo-Antonio Vigo: “The fact that the [art] work must travel a set distance is part of its structure; it is the work itself. The work has been created to be sent through the mail. The postal system then does not exhaust its function in the transfer of the work, but it incorporates and conditions it. And the artist changes, in turn, the function of this medium of communication.”

See also mail artists:

Paulo Bruscky. “O meu grito.”

Leonhard Frank Duch: “I Am An Artist.”

Eugenio Dittborn

Claudia del Rio

Did email kill Mail Art?

See also the 2025 exhibit In Creative Harmony: Three Artistic Partnerships in the Blanton Museum of Art. The idea that artists never create in isolation.