What is "Mail Art"?

"Mail Art" is hard to define as one thing because every mail artist would give you a different definition. Essentially, it's a big international network of people who exchange artwork and ideas via the postal service. Mail art in simplest terms is one person sending another person something that they have created. In more complex terms, there are mail art shows where hundreds of people send in work according to a specific theme. All of the work that is sent in is displayed in some manner and everyone who participates gets "documentation"--a list of all the artists, and possibly a catalog of the artwork. Announcements for these shows are distributed within the network (often to people who have participated in past shows), and not from any central location. It is democratic art at its best. Pop artist Ray Johnson is considered the originator of the network- in the 1950's he shunned the gallery-dealer-museum system of conventional art and started sending his artwork to people for free, often for no apparent reason. Sometimes he would prompt the recipients to change the piece in some way and pass it on to a third person, setting in motion a chain of contact which continues to this day. Ray Johnson committed suicide in 1995, but some of the pieces which Ray originated are still in circulation. Mail art seeks to break down the division between audience and artist-- anyone can be a mail artist, and have their work shown in a mail art show, regardless of academic credentials or technical skill- all you need is a stamp.

On the Theory and Practice of Mail Art

Fun in the world of postal art exchange

Ray Johnson Collage

I first heard of mail art while I was in college, at Penn State University. I heard strange rumors of a group of people who shared artwork by way of the postal service. Odd, I thought. I had been participating in this practice for years, creating segmented postcards with artwork including collage and rubber stamps on the back (I was obsessed with rubber stamps for some reason). I had never suspected that there was a name for what I was doing, let alone a whole group of people who did these things.

For one of my classes, 2D Design, we had an actual mail art project, to create a piece that was to go into an exhibit, and eventually into a time capsule which would be opened 100 years in the future, supposedly. It was kind of a neat idea that sparked my interests in such pursuits.

A few years later, I started ASKalice, which began as a series of collages, changed into a T-shirt company and finally a sort of recording label, before changing into it's current manifestation. I posted flyers and sent out dozens of postcards to get people to exchange "collages, drawings, photos, Xerox, etc.", but success remained elusive. Some artists seemed so attached to their ideas and artwork that they wouldn't send me any for fear that I would exploit them for fame and fortune, and others had no concept of what I wanted them to send me at all. This was going to be harder than I thought.

I finally found the network, via a guy named Oliver Squash who puts out his own tapes, and was a rather enthusiastic network participant. Oliver put up these little slips of paper in music stores at Penn State. I found one and gave it to my friend Herr Brine, who sent Squash a tape. To make a long story short, Squash sent Brine a chain letter, which Brine (after letting it sit around for six months) sent to me.* It had the address of one Ashley Parker Owens, mail art goddess and all around central hub of a large percentage of networkers. I sent Ms. Owens two stamps and a letter about my mail art woes. She responded with a postcard that said "the mail art scene will surprise you beyond your wildest dreams", and she was right. There was an ever-changing network of people who were doing exactly what I had wanted to do. The fact that I had remained ignorant of it for so long led me to believe in the possibility of any number of other networks, outside of this one.

So how do I define "mail art"?

Olives
  • It has no set criteria other than it must be sent by mail.
  • Like anything that can be defined as "art", it is a reflection of our culture, an aesthetic that uses devices associated with mass production (rubber stamps, Xerox, mass mailings) to convey it's message, but everything (and I do mean everything) can be (and is) added to the mix. .
  • It is decentralized, in that mail artists all rely on other artists to convey their messages, their work, their advertisements for projects.
  • It is international, and it goes beyond the usual cultural barriers of geography and language.
  • There is no sanctity of completion; all that is put into it is subject to further manipulation by other artists: nothing is ever finished. This is what art is really all about, continual reinvention and metamorphosis. Paintings in the museums are just interesting stops along the way, but they are never the end of the road.
  • Because it is freely reproduced and traded, but never sold, it cannot be compromised for the sake of money.
  • It embodies the do-it-yourself spirit that has been absent from conventional art and music for too long. Anybody can participate.
  • One can take comfort in knowing that no matter what you do, chances are good that there is someone, somewhere who will like it.

*The same day I sent out my 10 copies of the chain letter, I won $5000 in the state lottery. This really happened.

© 1995, Ken B. Miller & Contributors as Listed. | Reproduced from Shouting at the Postman #3, March, 1995 | 12268

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