MAIL ART NEWS

  Hazeleye by Cameron Terhune As mentioned in  Mail Art News #34 , IUOMA member  Sarah Roe  sent me a link to Cameron Terhune's article:  My Ukrainian Correspondence Saved My Life . We then discussed the possibility of doing an interview with him, and since Sarah has an ongoing electronic communication with him, she agreed to serve as the go-between for this Q and A. The following interview was conducted by email on May 18, 2023.   -T. Brown How and when did you first get into mail art? Cameron Terhune (CT): I got started in mail art before I knew what mail art was, back in about 2011 or so. I had recently been transferred into a less restrictive prison where reading material and pens, pencils and the like were allowed. I didn't have anyone to write, but I was hurting for lack of human contact so I started writing to addresses I found in the numerous zines and free literature floating around the yard. I don't remember the exact progression but I got ah...

work by Jurgen Olbrich, 1992, recently posted by nonlocal variable A big thank you to nonlocal variable for sharing from his mail art archives on IUOMA. Just think of the millions of letters and postcards sitting in storage boxes around the world. Also thanks everyone for joining me on my mail art journalism adventure,  as I construct an ongoing self-portrait   ( Selbstporträt) of the mail art community.  There's an interview in the works with the help of IUOMA member Sarah Roe. See the section titled "The Internet at Large" immediately below for more of an idea on that. And I am really excited about an upcoming post scheduled for the end of May / start of June that will focus exclusively on the use of rubber stamps in mail art. Several artists have already responded to the questions ( Maxima Strange , Mim Golub Scalin , Joey Patrickt , Pam Chatfield , Lulu Flanagan and Carien van Hest so far).   Do you use your rubber stamps in your mail art? If so, Mail Art News...

  Yellow House by Pam Chatfield (cropped for header image use) ✉ 🎨 🖌 📰    ✉ 🎨 🖌 📰    ✉ 🎨 🖌 📰  Thomas Brown (TB):   I see on your blog that you've been a mail artist since 1979. How did you get started in mail art? Pam Chatfield (PC):  When I was a teenager I tried penpalling.  I found that I wasn't too much into letter writing, but I loved exchanging drawings, stickers, and participating in add & passes.  I lost most of my pen pals because they liked long letters and they were lucky to get a whole paragraph out of me.  Eventually the letter writers dropped off and I was left with a few people who were like me, so we continued to send each other art and circulate our little add & pass booklets.  Then when I got married my new hubby was in the air force and I moved from Massachusetts to New Mexico.  At that point my friends from Massachusetts joined in the art and add & pass correspondence to ...

  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 ar...