Sometimes the Post Office goes a Little Too Far in Assisting with Mail Art

[Thom Courcelle]

Sometimes you get a whole postcard... and sometimes the post office decides you only get PART of a postcard:

It is *STILL* mightily beautiful in its partial-ness. Achingly colorful and enthralling. Much thanks to Coco Muchmore for this beautiful thing.

I *DO* consider the Post Office a "participant" in Mail Art—the cancellation marks, the dings, the smears, the machine roller drag tracks that can distort some of our original artwork... This has always been part of the mystique of Mail Art—that it travels the globe and "experiences" a little roughhousing along the way. Sometimes something like this happens, and I will forever wonder what has happened to the other quarter of this postcard. Is is laying at the bottom of a post office machine, hidden under cogs and springs? Did it tear off while the delivery person was pulling it from his satchel and is it lying on someone's lawn or in a street gutter? Did a postal clerk decide she needed a new bookmark for the romance novel she picked up at the library and thought this postcard was so colorful she'd just steal a smidgen of it?? WE'LL NEVER KNOW...but the imagination roils with possibilities. I hope that little corner of Coco's postcard discovers an amazing story...

Or maybe squirrels ate it...

[Katerina Nikoltsou (MomKat)]

or maybe Coco designed it that way?

or had to tear off a few grams to not add extra postage?

or it was part of a large painting and was cut into small sections?

or...

maybe the squirrels ate it , ha!

It is lovely and colorful indeed!