Ephemera packrat Chris Houser didn't know that she had
stumbled on a new trend when she came across 500 manila
mailing tags at an office supply store last summer. She
just bought them because they looked cool. Soon after
her purchase, while watching a rerun of palimony expert
and actor Jack Klugman's 1970s-era television series Quincy,
M.E., Houser noticed that the shipping labels bore
a close resemblance to the morgue identification system,
a.k.a. toe tags, used in the show. In a flash of rather
morbid inspiration, Houser, a 39-year-old systems analyst
in Seattle, realized that the faux toe tags would become
fodder for her next Griffin & Sabine-style art project.
Unwittingly, she had stepped into the national tag-trading
arena.
Toe tagging--the craft of turning homely oaktag labels
into objets d'art--is commonly referred to as tag
art, and it's the hottest thing to hit the rubber stamp
community since colored ink. That's right, rubber stamps.
It might seem that rubber stamping is the cutie-pie domain
of imaginative 4-year-olds and their mothers. In fact,
the ultimate in E-Z art, these little ink-and-pad doodad-makers
are one haute hobby. Toe tagging elevates rubber stamps
from child's play to artist's medium.
"Mostly we are hobbyists, and our activity is for fun
and creative expression. Many of us," says Houser of her
friends and colleagues, "make a living as graphic designers,
instructors, etc., so the hobby is closely tied to our
income-producing talents."
Creating the art, however, is only half of the attraction.
Perhaps what is most interesting about tag art is its
function as a social activity, like bridge or quilting.
Artisans come together to trade tags, ooh and ahh over
each other's masterpieces and forge community.
"I'm definitely not the first to produce tag art," says
Houser speaking from her Seattle home, "but I am the first--that
I know of--to coordinate a collaborative project [called
an exchange] and collate the results."
Pokémon for parents? Sort of.
"Exchange projects are as much about learning new techniques
and materials," she explains, "as they are about showing
your art. And toe tags display a magnificent variety of
design and technique--from collage to ink transfer to
rubber stamping to freehand drawing."
For Houser's exchange, 50 toe-taggers were asked to contribute
enough original, decorated shipping tags to fill an artist's
book for each participant. The theme was to commemorate
favorite artists, and the response was overwhelming. Houser
received hundreds of tags covered in stamps, collages,
calligraphy, spray paint and pressed flowers, paying tribute
to such pioneers as Frida Kahlo and Georgia O'Keeffe.
The tag-art phenomenon has not gone unnoticed in Portland.
First Impression Rubber Stamp Arts on Northeast Fremont
Street is the largest store of its kind in the country,
the equivalent of Powell's Books for stampers. One could
spend a whole day in this huge space and look forward
to plenty of uncovered territory the next (there seem
to be more shoppers waiting for F.I.'s doors to open each
day than at any Meier & Frank warehouse sale). There
are more than 15,000 stamps--tiny teddy bears to Hawaiian
hula girls--for sale, and as many as 35 classes to choose
from. It's the perfect haunt for anyone who wants to try
toe tagging.
"Rubber stamping is part of my mental health regime,"
says First Impression's special events and class coordinator,
Debbie Supplitt.
A 45-year-old mother of two young boys and a Vancouver
native, Supplitt has two master's degrees and three teaching
credentials. But rather than use her edification for more
professorial pursuits, she has chosen to support her stamping
habit.
For a long time, Supplitt wasn't the least bit interested
in rubber stamps. "Time is precious," she says. "I was
too busy for such nonsense." But at the persistence of
a friend, she finally caved and tried it at her own kitchen
table in 1993. Ten minutes into her first attempt at stamping,
Supplitt was hooked. "It was as if the right side of my
brain kicked in and, suddenly, there was no looking back."
Lately, Supplitt has been seduced by tag art. She first
noticed the trend last year, not in Portland but at a
convention of like-minded graphic artists at a Holiday
Inn in Lakewood, Ohio. It was during this five-day workshop
that Supplitt saw conventiongoers trading toe tags like
8-year-olds swap pictures of Pikachu. "Part of the friendship
factor at stamp gatherings is that you make something
that you can trade with other stampers. It establishes
a common ground," says Supplitt, who usually makes 50
art pieces to trade at any given event.
Stamping might not be quite so revelatory for most as
it has been for Supplitt, who not only switched jobs to
follow her bliss but also devoted one room in her home
wholly to the activity. In the age of Internet iciness,
though, toe-tagging delivers all the togetherness of an
old-fashioned quilting bee. Multiply that by the satisfaction
of making, giving and getting art, and it's clear that
tag art is something bigger than the new canasta. Of course,
taggers will soon be trading online....
First Impression Rubber Stamp Arts, 4803 NE Fremont
St., 288-2338.
