Wharton Hood
by jwc 3o2
since it's no longer anykinda secret, Wharton Hood was a pseudonym that i began using – first just randomly playfully &, later, in serious earnest – in the early 198os. i came across the name on one of those blue "HELLO MY NAME IS" stickers, which i picked up (& still have) on i think it was Bedford Street in Toronto. initially, in keeping with its origin, i used it to "sign" the copious quantities of "found poetry" i was generating through various writing systems, which i'd begun submitting to magazines of various kinds. it didn't take long for the whole parallel life to get completely outta hand & "Wharton Hood" now has a bibliography numbering hundreds of items, produced thousands of pages of correspondence, ran a publishing company from various addresses (none mine) &, what's documented here, participated on the fringes of the disparate (or izzat "desperate"?)"mail art" community, making collaged postcards (mainly in series) & adding somewhat rude homemade (from pornrag cuttingboards & letraset) stamps to some of the arrays of postage that decorated his mailings. the Yoko Ono series of postcard collages were made from a postcard ad for her screening of Bottoms in Toronto, produced by Jim Shedden, that i'd gotten a stack of (&'m still using).