What is Mail Art?

Mail art began in the 1960s when artists sent postcards inscribed with poems or drawings through the post rather than exhibiting or selling them through conventional commercial channels.

Media commonly used in mail art include postcards, paper, a collage of found or recycled images and objects, rubber stamps, and paint, but can also include music, sound art, poetry, or anything that can be put in an envelope and sent via post. Mail art is considered art once it has been sent.

Mail artists appreciate interconnection with other artists and rely on their network as the primary way of sharing their work, rather than being dependent on securing exhibition space.

Radical Pop and conceptual artist Ray Johnson kicked things off. He began to ship packages from his home in New York including collages, drawings, annotated newspaper clippings, as well as found images and objects from snake skins to plastic forks. These were sent to art-world celebrities, friends, and strangers alike.

Artists have continued to keep pace with evolving communication technologies, even as snail mail has been replaced by swifter electronic messaging. Mail art these days tends to be a hybrid of the analog and the digital.

When Frank Warren launched Post Secret in 2005, it became an almost immediate sensation. Part crowd-sourcing phenomenon, part psychological experiment, the website encouraged visitors to write or illustrate their secrets on a postcard, then send them to a single address. Today, Warren publishes 10 anonymous secrets to the blog each week, still attracting confessions from every corner of the globe.

Similarly, art galleries and exhibition spaces have also used a blend of old-fashioned mail and social media to grow their networks and bring creatives together.

See below for some examples of Mail Art received by Lee Jackson who posts little books of Tanka poems to his network. If you would like to be included in the mailing list send your postal address to Lee at info@moonink.co.uk

Please contact MoonInk at info@moonink.co.uk if you have any questions.

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