Make It Real

Sent mail (or "scent mail!" I sewed lavender and other herbs into my mail art. Real mail that you can smell and FEEL mail!)

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Carlo Pittore sharing his mail art collection with my silkscreen class at Maine College of Art in 2003. (The mail art that Carlo is holding is from Japan. It is two cardboard hands connected by a long rope, symbolizing the distance between the USA and Japan, and the friendly connection between the two mail artists. The rope is covered with stamps, and this piece of mail art went through the post like just like this! Carlo was moved to tears as he told this story. This was one of his favorite pieces of mail art...)

I have always decorated my letters and envelopes for as long as I can remember, and I delighted in sending unusual letters even when I was just a kid (for instance, I once wrote a letter to a girl friend on a roll of toilet paper!). Little did I know that I was participating in a phenomenon known in the art world as "mail art." My old dear departed friend Carlo Pittore introduced me to mail art back in the 80's when I moved to central coast Maine, and began figure drawing at his Academy in Bowdoinham. Carlo was a central figure in the international mail art movement along with his more famous friends, Ray Johnson and Bern Porter.

Early mail art originated partly as a rejection of the exclusive gallery scene. Anyone can participate. Indeed, "senders receive," a motto of the Mail Art movement, dictates that if someone receives a piece of mail art, they must create and send some mail art. Mail art can be something as simple as "mailed art," like a decorated envelope, to something more inventive and challenging, like Naked Mail, which requires the participation of the postal system above and beyond the usual call of duty!

This fall I started a mail art project with a few folks on Facebook. I was thinking about how people nowadays do most of their corresponding on-line. We have stopped writing letters. And I was thinking about how my friend Carlo started each day catching up on his correspondence. I still have many of the whimsical cards that Carlo sent to me over the 20 years that we were friends, cards that bear loving and supportive messages printed with quill pen and black India ink, in Carlo's unmistakeable bold handwriting. He never missed a friend's birthday. I wondered what Carlo would make of this whole Facebook/digital THING that is happening today. I missed seeing people's handwriting, I missed doodling and collaging and picking out cool stamps to stick on my envelopes, and above all I missed getting real mail in my mail box. A piece of real mail mixed in with all the boring bills and junky mass printed fliers is such a rare treat! So I invited people on Facebook to send me their addresses and told them that I would mail them some REAL MAIL with the only stipulation being that they must send me something back. It's been alot of fun! If any of you out there in blog land would like to join in, simply e-mail me me your address!