Push the envelope: mail art primer now available

October 27, 7:01 PMSan Jose Contemporary Art ExaminerErica Goss

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Good Mail Art website

Last week, I checked my mailbox.  A grocery flyer, a few bills, other forgettable things – but then I saw it!  A handmade postcard from a dear friend and fellow art experimenter!  Using heavy paper, candy wrappers, old photos, and rubber stamps, she sent me an invitation.  Not to be outdone, I quickly grabbed some ephemera (also known as “trash”) and whipped together a reply, stuck a few stamps on it, and dropped it off at the post office.

People create mail art for the express purpose of having something wonderful arrive in the mail.  It defies the oft-repeated phrase “no one sends mail anymore.”  It combines elements of drawing, collage, recycling, found art, and writing.  Practitioners create, receive and collect beautiful, artistic and sometimes peculiar items.  The adventure is only limited by the imagination. 

Good Mail Day, A Primer for Making Eye-Popping Postal Art will get you started.  Written by Jennie Hinchcliff and Carolee Gilligan Wheeler, this book helps readers “learn to create decorated and illustrated envelopes, faux postage, make a mail art kit, and find pen pals.” Illustrated with plenty of photographs, Good Mail Day provides inspiration, entertainment and instruction into the seemingly endless possibilities of mail art. 

In order to receive mail art, you have to send it.  Good Mail Day details the process of setting up a network of mail artists who participate regularly in the exchange.  It certainly makes it easier to send something off when the mail now holds such possibilities!

People mail the strangest things.  Plastic water bottles with notes coiled inside, squares of Astroturf, marshmallow Peeps, inflated balloons, and a coconut have all been successfully delivered.  To placate the post office, add extra postage – a little kindness goes a long way!