JANET PASSEHL
Artstamp Contribution
Artstamp Editions by Janet Passehl (2012–2017)
In her Artstamp editions created between 2012 and 2017, American artist and poet Janet Passehl explores the poetic potential of language, image, and scale. Drawing from her own printed poems, Passehl isolates words, lines, and punctuation, creating miniature compositions that simultaneously evoke the function of the postage stamp and the expansive inner space of the poem.
Each Artstamp becomes a visual and textual fragment — a message without sender or address — riding across the conceptual space of postal communication. By removing text from context and reformatting it visually, Passehl opens new meanings and interpretive possibilities. Her works allude to the poetic voice, personal memory, and the slippages between public and private language.
The Artstamp texts are drawn from both published and in-progress poems, including Brahmakamal, featured in Caliban(Issue #7, p. 24). Her stamp texts include lines such as “sky, the sky, away.” and “always the flower opens, sheer and as a kind of slavery,” pointing to a meditative and fragmentary sensibility.
Published in 2012 in editions of 125 and 24 (signed), the stamps were issued on full print sheets (30x37 mm) and presented as part of the ongoing Artstamp.dk project initiated by Stalke Galleri.
