Mail Art News #16: Aha! Editor Thomas Brown Tells All
 | ||
This is a decorated envelope that was too good to send out, but I will send it out one day.
|
Nonlocal Variable: Thanks for making time to tell us more about yourself and Mail Art News. The News is such a great idea. What gave you the inspiration to start it up?
TB: Thank you. Thank you. In March / April 2023, I was going through my archives of things I'd made and posted to social media over the years. These were things I decided I could part with, and so the result was that I sent out about 55 pieces of mail domestically and internationally in March / April. I was really drumming it up and in the excitement, I decided: Mail Art News. Going through the archives was a retrospective that brought many, many memories. And in the process I was reminded that I heart art and I heart mail art. Mail artists want and deserve some attention, right? I see creative types investing their energies into these postal endeavors and I don't feel like the artists or the genre get the regular attention that they perhaps should be getting? At any rate, I enjoy the phenomenon that is mail art and Mail Art News gives me the opportunity to simultaneously self-promote and promote others.
NV: What are your goals and intent with News?
TB: The intention of Mail Art News is to promote the work of artists who work in the field of mail art. The goals: regular posts featuring interviews, meandering reviews of the possible meanings of selected images, and documentation of any interesting events / happenings. So far, lots of interviews. I have some posts about mail art happenings. I have not done any posts yet where I ponder on the possible meanings of any received objects de mail arte. Although that is on the horizon.
NV: Aside from your mail artist interviews, where are you finding your stories?
TB: IUOMA, internet search. I would like people to send me links to mail art happenings. Is there a local mail art exhibition happening in your city or town? Let me know. The Smithsonian had an exhibition in 2018. I had no idea. https://www.aaa.si.edu/exhibitions/pushing-the-envelope.
Recently, I did a post about Coco Muchmore introducing a group of high school students to mail art. I saw that on IUOMA. That is really the main go-to place. Other than that, I am going to have to venture into the blogosphere and keep an eye out for posts in FB groups and on Instagram. But if you or any of the other readers have ideas or suggestions, send me an email at mailartnews@gmail.com or mail me a postcard.
I imagine there are essays or historical accounts floating around out there that someone would want to share, though I am not able to offer payment at this time.
NV: Who/what got you into the mail art game and when did you start in earnest? What made you like the idea?
TB: In 2010, I decided to make a zine called The Brown Mega Corporation Arts Newsletter, to document the works of my online art friends and associates. These were then mailed out to a list of dozens of people. I was also sending one or two hand-made postcards in the mail at this time. And somewhere around this time, though I cannot pinpoint the exact order of events, I watched How to Draw a Bunny, a film about the life of celebrated correspondence artist Ray Johnson.
The zine only lasted about a year and a half due to time and
costs associated with producing a free zine and mailing it out every month or
two, but I was getting more and more into producing and collecting rubber
stamps. So rubber stamping has been a driver of my adventure into the world of
mail art. Somewhere around 2014, I was regularly mailing rubber stamped images,
but also whatever media I felt like working with, such as collage, ink, paint,
or typewriter.
 |
| A take on the grasshopper and the ants |
NV: You’re on IUOMA, Instagram, and Blogspot. What’s the ratio of the time you’re doing physical mail art versus time on digital mail art platforms?
TB: I was just telling myself yesterday that I need to make some postcards for sending out. Blogging has now taken top priority, as I work that into my creative practices, and I can see that it will take up a good chunk of my free time moving forward. I will be on IUOMA daily to check in on happenings. Facebook and Instagram...I will post there as inspiration strikes. There's a handful of mail art groups on Facebook. I check IG daily because it's a nice flow of art that I can scroll through. I currently have three days off per week, so I can give a few hours one or two days per week to blogging. No problem.
NV: There’s a thread going around right now: “What are the rules or etiquette of mail art?” What’s your point of view on that?
TB: I believe in the Golden Rule of Mail Art: "Send only to others what you would like to receive in the mail yourself." I would like to read that thread though. I think the only rule other than the Golden Rule of Mail Art would be to blur out addresses when posting to social media. Once I send something to someone, it's 100% up to them what to do with it.
NV: Your work looks pretty varied. How would you describe your style?
TB: I'm over here now. Now I'm over here. Here. This is interesting. Haha, look what I can do with this. Isn't that interesting? Now look at this. Look at that! Haha. Hmmm. Very cool.
"Give me levity or give me depth" is a fun
saying. I'd say my style is constantly evolving.
NV: Do you have underlying (or overt) messages or themes in your work? And what’s ELSTLAN FONNTY about?
TB: In June of 2022 one of the Gnar Beige admins, sent me a link to Midjourney. Gnar Beige is a group of artists on Facebook and Instagram, who work in a computer-y style (a mix of glitch art, generative art, psychedelic, abstract filter art, pixel art). I jumped right into the AI art waters, coming up with some things that were "wow" to me: A device for viewing events from the past, The Infinity Game, an app for creating actual planets, galaxies, and universes, and even a new religion called the Church of the Neuron. So you see, from June 2022 until early 2023, I was heavily into AI art using Midjourney, a program that refuses to generate actual words in the images it generates. When I saw ELSTLAN FONNTY (by Adam Roussopoulos) which was among the first rubber stamps created using AI, I was in quite a sci-fi / fantasy mindset. And the image seems to tell its own little story. In the story of human civilization on Earth, the chapter on AI has just begun.
 |
| Church of the Neuron As previously mentioned, the aliens dropped me off with the farm couple, who worshipped the crucified neuron, which I should add is a sect of the larger Church of the Neuron, focusing specifically on crucified neurons, as not all neurons need be crucified. It was a lot to wrap my mind around at the time, growing up in a small farming community. |
NV: Do you have an artistic background, or are you part of the “everyone’s an artist” mail art crowd?
TB: I'm a self-taught creative-type. I picked up drawing around the age of four or five, and have been developing my style since that time, incorporating techniques from others, developing my own techniques. I took one painting class at the very end of my time at Towson University while earning a degree in History, though I am not the best historian when it comes to exact dates. I thought "Hey wait a minute, I like history, but I looooooooove art." Around 2004, I decided to be an artist and boldly ventured into the world of online art groups to learn from the creative energies of others and to share my own creative energies. But even then, it's something that I've had to do when I wasn't doing my day job. I'm not a professional artist who makes a living from my art. I've been pretty anti-commercial artistically. I'm in it for the Qi.
Everyone is some kind of artist, in their own ways. Now, how useful is this xyz work of art within the mind of the viewer? For me, it's a matter of resonating with an image made by someone else, being micro-excited. A network in the mind of micro-excitations. Are you singing "Good Vibrations" by the Beach Boys yet?
NV: Do you show your mail art to non-mail art friends, and if so, how do they respond? Does your family know about this habit, and what do they think?
TB: Once in a while, I will show something to a co-worker, or non-mail art friend, or relative, and it will give a small blip on their radar. I can't expect everyone to define their entire being in relation to mail art, even if I find it fascinating.
NV: How can your followers help spread the word about Mail Art News?
TB: Send any mail art related news to mailartnews@gmail.com. Send a link to your friends: https://mailartnews.blogspot.com. Add Mail Art News to your blogroll. I will add you in return. You could even interview a mail artist friend yourself and email me a copy. If you have mail art related essays, memoirs, photos, or book reviews, send them to me. And of course, if you would like to be interviewed, just send an email saying "Interview me" and we will get the process started.
NV: Thanks so much for taking the initiative to put this new media platform in place. We appreciate it.
Here’s a look at a few of Thomas’ creative mail art pieces, with comments from the artist.
 |
| Cardworks #109 Submitted to the American Visionary Art Museum as part of a charity mail call. Still up for grabs. https://sideshowbaltimore.myshopify.com/products/cardworks-109 |
 |
| The world shapes the artist… It's true, isn't it? |
 |
Historicus Thanks to our powerful network of satellite technologies, the new Historicus device from Brown Mega Corporation allows you to see the events of the past, great and small, exactly as they happened. This is not a recreation software. This is the real thing -- a window into the past. |
 |
Two dragons on alien planet These rubber stamp scenes are like little movie scenes for me. What's happening here? Are they fighting over control of that large rubber stamp? |
Comments
Post a Comment
Thank you for commenting.