QR code artistamps from Sarah Roe

Baltimore. Maryland. USA. Mail art.

This is by no means a comprehensive encyclopedic account of the mail artists who call / have called the Baltimore metropolitan area home. Per usual, this blog post is the result of a combination of internet search and reaching out to one or more people by email or instant message.

A search last week for "mail art" Baltimore resulted in a number of examples of early 1900s mail art, so next week, I will take a further look at decorated envelopes from this period. The Pinterest page indicates that this item, sent to a relative living in Baltimore in 1909, was found in a photo album belonging to a man named William Edward Kerr, of Portland Oregon.

In the 1960s, Baltimore-born May Wilson moved to New York and became an underground artist and a close correspondent with Ray Johnson. Take a look at the trailer for the documentary Woo Who? May Wilson. Ahh, fascinating stuff. Something about New York in the 1960s and 1970s calls to me, and now I must watch this film. The Pratt Library has a copy, but it's also available through the online streaming service called Kanopy. Hot dang!

Fast-forward to the 1970s and you'll see names such as Blaster Al Ackerman and Mars Tokyo (Sally Mericle). I have a memory of seeing Blaster Al working behind the cash register at Normals Books and Records in the 1990s, long before I was into mail art. Little did I know at the time that he was a big name in mail art. Interestingly, Normals offers a copy of Brain in the Mail for $150. Based on the pdf preview, it looks enticing, but the price is too high for me. Only 1000 copies of this 78 page book by Istvan Kantor and David Zack were published (1980). Cover art by Blaster Al Ackerman. Note that R. Cohen's Brain Cell project launched in 1985.

Mars Tokyo has been in the mail art game since 1976 and has a website and two Instagram accounts: 1 and 2. She even owned the Mars Toyko Rubber Stamp Company until 2000. Quite impressive.

Mars Tokyo, 2015

In the late 1980s / early 1990s, there was something called the Art Strike. Representatives from Baltimore formed the Baltimore Art Strike Action Committee. The idea was proposed that creative workers should stop creating from 1990 to 1993 in order to send a message to the establishment art market. From my limited understanding, the movement caused some buzz, but did not gain a great deal of traction for various reasons.

excerpt from The Art Strike Papers

"Stop making art; make art instead." is a humorous mantra I'm imagining, which is somewhat related to the topic of the Art Strike. It just seems like art is always going to be a matter of personal priorities working with / against some vague concept of societal priorities. Of course, where are the boundaries between the individual and society? Then there's the idea that the artist shapes the world while the world is shaping the artist...a dynamic interplay. Quite a topic and beyond the scope of today's blog post.

mail from Thomas Brown, documented by De Villo Sloan in 2015

In 2015, Mary England and Erika Milenkovic organized a mail art show in the observation level of Baltimore's World Trade Center called "What's Your View?"

In 2016, Maryland artist Cynthia Daignault sent a series of post cards, titled The mysterious arrival of an unusual letter to Allison and Terry Montesi in Fort Worth Texas. The cards, oil on linen, mounted on cardstock were then gifted to the Blanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin. Each card features a painted river scene on the front and thoughtful text on the back. For example: "Yet, what is it about home, whose beauty cannot be superseded?" Visit the link to the Blanton Museum to see all seven of the cards, front and back.

Cynthia Daignault, 2015-2016, oil on linen mounted on cardstock

Intrigued, I reached out to the artist on Instagram to learn more about this remarkable series of post cards. The project was far larger than I could have imagined. Here's what she had to say:

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Cynthia Daignault: "In 2016, I was traveling around the the country making my monumental work Light Atlas [a body of work consisting of 360 paintings.-TB]. During that year, I painted a series of 180 postcards of things I saw on the trip and sent them to people along the way as I was traveling. Friends, family, collectors, curators, etc. I sent seven of those 180 to the Montesis and they decided to donate theirs to the Blanton. The 180 pictured all kinds of things, but those seven did have a shared theme of rivers, since I knew they were all going to the same family.

Basically I was making this monumental work Light Atlas which was a portrait of the country - but I wanted there to be some record of the making of the work- the time and thinking and experience of everything that isn’t in that piece. Like a documentary of the making of - and I wanted to share that with other people. And I was traveling and seeing the country. Hence the postcards and the mail art. I love that 180 people each own one small piece of that trip and of the country."

Cynthia Daignault's Light Atlas at Crystal Bridges Museum of Art, 2018

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From 2017 to 2021, there was an ongoing correspondence between Los Angeles artist Paula Cronan and Baltimore artist Dominique Zeltzman, documented on Instagram.

D. Zeltzman, 2018

In 2022, the American Visionary Art Museum did their Cardworks mail art call, the proceeds of which were to benefit the museum. You can see Mail Art News #20 for more info on that.

Thank you for joining me on this trip. If you have any stories to tell about Baltimore, as relates to mail art, simply send me an email: mailartnews@gmail.com. You can send me info on any mail art related topics. It doesn't have to be Baltimore-related. And now...onwards to the Weekly Review of mail art as seen from my corner of the universe.

Weekly Review, August 16, 2023.

ZMAG, the Zoom Mail Artist Group, is celebrating their three-year anniversary today. Send them an email if you would like more information: info@zmagmailartistgroup.com

These QR code artistamps from Sarah Roe are so flipping cool! Thank you! They work. I'm going to start using them on my outgoing mail immediately.

incoming from Sarah Roe

Dare Richard C., your post has landed. We probably do have some things in common, but we're also probably different in some ways.

incoming, from Richard Canard

Jon Foster opened a new gallery in Greensboro, North Carolina. It's on the side of a dumpster. The artworks are magnets.

Over at IUOMA, Sabela Baña has received a collage from Sticker Dude. I love the effect of the green-blue-purple cloudlike shapes interfering with the communications lines. I feel it somewhere in my mind's file cabinet. A little bit like a migraine, but also a little like unwanted thoughts. Maybe psychedelic mushrooms kicking in. At any rate, it's cluttered and crowded, which is rate-limiting the communications process.

Joel Cohen, aka Sticker Dude

I'm including three postcards from the archives this time, instead of the usual one. Just for fun. Why not? In honor of the three stars in Orion's Belt.