Received: Minimalist mail-art from Marie (Richmond, Virginia, USA)

[De Villo Sloan]

October 18, 2010 - Marie has done a striking minimalist mail-art series using strips of paper (or even some other dense material) glued over a post-card size surface. This piece I received is about as stripped-down and economical as you can be without resorting to representations of emptiness. When I look at Marie's mail-art above, I notice that the varying thicknesses of the black strips draw attention to the methods accumulated over centuries to create what is ultimately an illusion of spatial depth and scale on what is in actuality a two-dimensional plain.

Yet the abstractness of this is offset when you have the real mail-art in your hand. (I'm waiting for someone to ask if what you are holding in your hands is actually real - greater minds than ours are still struggling with this question.) You can run your fingers over the surface and feel changing textures - smooth and rough. Some of the strips are starting to separate from the card.

I think about the concern I've heard from archivists and others who are wondering what to do with books and art that - as the result of age - are beginning to fall apart. I've seen discussions here at IUOMA about how what happens to mail-art in the postal process is part of an ongoing evolution of the piece. These are interesting issues and inherently move our view of art away from abstraction and toward a view of object integrated with environment and evolving through space in time.

ANOTHER POSSIBILITY FOR MARIE'S MAIL-ART: Just after I had written the brilliant analysis above, someone walked in the room and saw Marie's mail-art on the desk. She said: "These mail-art people! Now they're sending you bar codes?" Have I missed the forest for the trees? Is Marie's mail-art just meant to be a bar code? Man, you know, you try doing this, okay?

Marie comments on my long-time use of Snoop for my IUOMA profile photo. Others have inquired. I don't know much about Snoop ;). I thought that maybe if he was online looking for Girls Gone Wild (wasn't he in that?) he might find his picture at IUOMA and send me some mail-art. I bet Snoop could do some really good mail-art if he applied himself. I also saw something he said in an article right before he went to jail or right after he was released: "I think I should have the right to drive around in my neighborhood with my friends without being shot at or being pulled over by the police for no reason." I thought that was a pretty amazing political statement coming from an artist. I'm not using his picture any more.

Thanks Marie, are you friends with at least one of us?