Mail artists do their thing

The Houston Chronicle reports that mail artists never know what they'll find in their mailbox.

New York graphic artist Mark Bloch has sent and received his share of weird mail over 30 years. He's gotten a piece of the Berlin Wall, a brick, a piece of toast, a platform shoe long after disco had died as well as mailed home fries in a soggy box.

Paola Morsiani, curator of the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, is quoted in the piece as saying mail art springs from the Utopian idea that everyone can make art and that art connects people all over the world.

Bloch reports, "Right now Spain is huge into mail art. They are in their golden age of mail art. China may be next. The original idea — no galleries, no museums, the address is the art, anyone can do it — is very attractive to young people, and when they hear about it they want to do it."

Apparently part of the fun is entertaining postal workers.

"The post office is so boring and regimented and restricted and conformist," fellow mail artist Beth Jacobs says. "We like to bust up the routine of the postal workers. White envelopes are just abhorrent to the mail artist's nature."

Mail artists and others are invited to send their work — drawn, printed or painted onto an envelope, parcel or postcard — to the Tate Modern Gallery, London, on or before April Fool's Day. The style, subject matter and media are open to the individual's discretion. Send to: April Fool's Day Mail Art Exhibition, Tate Modern, Bankside, London SE1 9TG

To read the entire article, click here.