Mail Art News #32: xyz ✉
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| a letter from The Sticker Dude, borrowed from Pam's Mail Art Blog |
That's a good sentiment from Joel, The Sticker Dude. Thank you to all the artists who have sent me the products of their creative energies in the mail over the years. I may have even subconsciously absorbed some of your creative essences in the form of pheromones and any other molecules that found their way onto the pieces of paper you were working on. Were you stressed out when you made this collage? Were you operating at genius level when you made this cartoon drawing? Were you sitting around in your underwear when you rubber stamped that piece of cardstock? A highly intelligent nose may have picked up on it. Clearly, a Mail Art Scientific Research Institute is needed to look further into such topics, but regardless, based on a pure visual level alone, my own creative processes and philosophies have been informed, and expressive abilities elevated as a result of being exposed to so many different styles of art coming my way. The more styles the better, though my favorite things to look at are rubber stamped images, a powerfully fun tool in the toolbox of the image construction technician. And with that I will get started by taking a look at some incoming mail.
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Incoming Mail
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| a bookie from Katerina Nikoltsou |
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| add & returns from Coco Muchmore! |
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Music
Send me any links to mail art related documentaries, videos, interviews, and mail-related music. I have two playlists going.
And here's a recent addition to the mail-related music playlist, from Mail Art News spokesmodel Ariel Greenwood (photoshoot pending), Postman's Fancy by The Ugly Ducklings. I'm calling it Mail Art Music because you can pretend all of the songs are about mail art in some way. Although the song Mailart Dada Skank from 1984 does stand out as more than just a song about the general mail.
Speaking of postal carriers, Mail Art News is looking for mailmen and mailwomen who either make mail art or who would like to share their experiences delivering mail art.
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The Internet At Large
Of note, Mail Art News shows up on the first page of results from search engines Yahoo and DuckDuckGo, both with and without quotation marks, but not on Google search, except as the IUOMA group for Mail Art News. Strange, no?
Article from Seven Days:
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| Installation view, "Letters Mingle Souls," by Mitsuko Brooks Courtesy Erin Jenkins / BMAC |
In "Letters Mingle Souls," mail artist Mitsuko Brooks invited survivors to write messages to their loved ones lost to suicide. She then re-wrote their words in her own script, incorporating them into her mixed-media collages.
Mitsuo on Instagram. If you know anyone struggling with depression and thoughts of suicide, encourage them to get help.
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Blogs
I've been reaching out to mail artists, asking if anyone has any mail art memories to share. Monster A Go-Go shares the following blog post from . Give it a read, or a listen. Sometimes I use a read-aloud extension, such as Text-to-speech reader by Read me. I used it recently to make it about half way through the Unabomber's Manifesto, and I need to get back to that after finishing this blog post.
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Facebook
So, yes, where to look for news related to mail art? You can go to IUOMA, any of the mail art groups on Facebook, the pages of mail artists on Instagram, the blogosphere, and occasionally, there will be an article in an online magazine or newspaper. Last week, when I was searching for mail art news on the news search tab, using Google, I came across an article about a project called Mail Art Worldwide.
"Set up in 2013 by father and son Kevin and James Gillen, the non-profit project aims to build a community of artists worldwide through encouraging people to send artwork in the post."
A link to the Facebook page is included in the article. From the FB page:
"We wish to celebrate our international Mail Art community, encouraging people of all ages and abilities to design and create envelopes, postcards, packages etc. and mail them on, generating an international collection of public works. This page is an online gallery space for people to share their Mail Art with the world. "
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| © Andrew Laferme |
What? The times I searched for mail art groups on Facebook and never saw this page which has been operating since March 4, 2013? I'm not sure how I missed it for ten years, but I wanted to give them a shout-out now, and circle back around to them in a future blog post. Hopefully, we can do an interview with them or just a more detailed write-up about what they do. The Facebook page looks fun and I see a lot of familiar names in the comment section, so I joined.
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This is niiiice! I want a copy. Seen on Angelo Paionni's FB page: The catalogue of the Roman exhibition at the TalentArt gallery.
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Ryosuke Cohen's Portrait Project is back on. E-mail: braincell@k6.dion.ne.jp
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KosTur Gallery posts on FB that MailArt 2023 Artmoney International Exhibition opens May 06 and will receive guests until May 30, 2023.
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IUOMA
The Rubber Portrait Project continues! Adam Roussopoulos has created 189 rubber stamp portraits of mail artists so far! Amazing. I know you've seen some of them out there in the mails already. Exciting.
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| illustration by Gary Schmedes |
Mail Art News has recently put out a call on IUOMA for mail art to be sent to Make Studio in Baltimore.
The mission of Make Studio is to empower artists with disabilities to grow as professionals with visibility and voice in their communities AND to create opportunities for everyone to connect through art.
I contacted them and they say they are definitely interested in exchanging mail art with IUOMA members. "Our artists LOVE mail art!"
Make Studio
3326 Keswick Rd.
Baltimore, MD 21211
USA
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Deaths
Jas Felter reports the death of H. R. Fricker (1947-2023). This was brought to my attention by Carl Chew:
"A short paragraph and three illustrations from my newest book. H. R. got to see them a month or so ago."
In 1923 Aldus and Miriam traveled to Trogen, Switzerland, for the Frickerland Science Festival. The festival occurred only once a decade, and it had been Aldus’s dream to attend. He sent his grown children postcards from the event.
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| Carl Chew |
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From the Archives
One piece of mail art, selected at random from the archives. Renew Your Subs Today from Julie Matevish, a play on the multiple meanings of the word sub (submarine, submarine sandwich, and subscription), date unknown. This is from circa 2020 if I have to guess.
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BONUS LIGHT GRAY TEXT ONLY FOR SUPER MAIL ART NEWS FANS: If you made it this far, let me tell you that I have a dream brewing. That dream is called Mail Art, the Movie, an independent film, glorifying mail art and the mail art lifestyle. Action, adventure, romance, travel, comedy. It's all going to be in there. It's fun for me to think about anyway, even if it's only in the very early stages of conceptualization. Never mind all the production and costs that would come with making such a film.
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