The Fluke Illuminator

Poetry. Art. Mail Art. Collaboration between Michael Peters & John M. Bennett. These Illuminations were created between 2001 and 2015. They could be called Visual Poems or Visual Stories or Art or Totemic Screens, or something else entirely. To create them, something like five "starts"—a few letters or an image or a rubber stamp or some combination thereof—were sent out in the mail (the first nine were done together at an artist's residency), and when these were added to by the receiving collaborator, the same five "Fluke Illuminations" were sent back to the original sender along with five new Fluke "starts." Materials in this overlapping process include alphabetic stamps, graphite pencils, colored pencils, rubber stamps, typewriters, handwriting, newspaper and magazine images, black ink, magic markers, and both acrylic paint and white exterior house paint. The result is a stunningly beautiful body of work that will repay many revisitings. John M. Bennett has published over 400 books and media materials of poetry, visual poetry, and other matters. He writes/creates in English, Spanish, and other languages; is editor and publisher, with his wife, the Fluxus artist C. Mehrl Bennett, of Luna Bisonte Prods, and is Curator of the Avant Writing Collection at the Ohio state University Libraries. Recent books include LA M AL (2015), VERTICAL SLEEP (2015), MIRRORS MÁSCARAS (2014), THE STICKY SUIT WHIRS: LOS PREOLVIDADOS (2013), OLVIDOS (2013), and BLOCK (2012). Michael Peters is the author of the sound- imaging work VAAST BIN (Calamari Press, 2007) and other assorted language art and sound works. The book VAAST BIN, which is part of a larger Vaast Bin Project, is also available through SPD. As certain as he is uncertain of access to "the real," Peters frequently tests this periphery in the guise of a poet, a visual poet, a fictioneer, and a musician in a variety of old and new media.