Mail art & the Minneapolis Protests: Allison Anne's historic collage (Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA)

[De Villo Sloan]

Mail art by IUOMA member Allison Anne (Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA)

June 4, 2020 - "Historic" is a word often considered antithetical to mail art. But this collage I am so fortunate to have received from artist and designer Allison Anne in Minnesota USA already resides in the intersection where history and culture co-exist.

She mailed the piece during the pandemic and, perhaps more relevant, when Minneapolis was shocked by tragic & horrific police brutality & racism. The protest movement that has expanded across the globe has touched all of us. The mail art community has responded to the isolation of the pandemic & the Minnesota tragedy in many ways.

Allison Anne has been a correspondence friend for several years & we share an interest in music. Her collage art is known and admired in the Eternal Network & beyond. I feel very fortunate indeed to have work by Allison Anne in my archives.

Mail art by Allison Anne (Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA)

Mail art is often viewed as "ephemeral." Correspondence artists, indeed, aspire to the temporal. Yet in the case of this collage by Allison Anne, the sturdy cardboard & formal structure have endured (and promise to exist in perpetuity) beyond the physical structure of the Minneapolis post office where Allison Anne collected & dispersed her art. Seldom does the postcard (for instance) survive architecture.

Note Allison Anne mailed the piece on April 24, 2020. When I finally braved pandemic & social unrest to collect my own mail in a nearby town, I messaged Allison Anne to thank her for this Trashpoesque work that I adore. (John M. Bennett (Ohio, USA) has said this kind of corrugated cardboard is ideal material for an artist.)

In response, Allison Anne wrote via Messenger, "It's a bit of history I suppose because the post office where I mailed it, where my po box is located, was one of the two post offices burned down during the protest." Thus we have an unusual case of mail art that has survived beyond the physical space from which it was dispersed. Furthermore, I see the collage as a triumph of anti-art & thus revolutionary art that only Allison Anne could achieve with her unique perspective & style.

Deepest thanks for this wonderful & memorable work!