Podcast with Roberta Sperling, My Very First Editor

Roberta is the Editor-in-Chief and--along with her husband, Michael--the owner of Rubberstampmadness, the very first rubber stamping magazine and the single most important factor in everything that came after. Before the internet, before the other magazines, before art retreats--there was Rubberstampmadness, which Lowry Thompson began in 1980. Roberta and Michael bought the magazine in 1982, and I started writing for Roberta in 1990-91.

So many mixed media artists got their start in rubber stamping. It's like the iPhone, kind of the gateway drug to everything else. You know: you get an iPhone, and the next thing you know you have a MacBook, and then an iMac, then an iPad. Same thing: you start out rubber stamping, and then you're carving stamps, and then you're doing mail art and faux postage and collage. Then bookbinding. Assemblage.

So today I talked to Roberta. I thought we'd talk about this very thing, about how stamping is at the core of so much of what goes on today. We did, some, but then we started reminiscing, talking about people we knew and mail art and what that used to be like, when you'd get armloads of fabulously funky stuff that other people sent you through the actual US Mail, back before everyone was terrified you'd be sending something dangerous.

It was a fabulous conversation, and maybe you're one of us, one of the ones who remember what it was like back then, back before there was eye candy everywhere and the best chance you had to get to see what other people were doing was when your copy of RSM arrived in your mailbox. It still can be--you can still subscribe, and if you're lucky, you'll catch some of that excitement~~