What is Mailart?

[Linda French]

One of the things I like best about mailart is that it isn't just one thing, and the only one who sets the rules is the USPS and ourselves. There's always something new to fiddle with. Or, I can forget about it for a few days and fit in a nap somewhere. Tonight I started to paint some envelopes that I'm recycling for a 'bad poetry' mail-out. After about the third mess, I stopped and just thought about it for a minute. I realized I really didn't want to do it. I wanted to create, but I was just too tired. So I quit for tonight. Tomorrow will probably be different, but for tonight I just left it.

Monday I will be sending out, among other things, a big poster size/quality flyer about the St Croix Valley Pottery Tour. It will be a pretty terrific event in southern Minnesota. Some of the potters have studios up north here where i live, so they are familiar to me. I won't be able to go, but the poster/flyer is really nice, so I used washi tape to attach a note and a few things to the inside of the folds, washi-taped it closed again, and fixed it for mailing out. I hope the person who gets it is able to go on the Tour, but even if not, it will be a cool thing to get in the mail -- it was for me when it arrived here. One of the things I taped inside was a "bad poetry" poem, but otherwise I didn't make art for it. And it will still be mailart, see?

There are a lot of things that mailart can be. I've been know as an artist most of my life, and that's good in one way because it saves explaining, but difficult in another. For some reason, people expect an artist to always be 'artistic'. Just what that means is probably different from person to person, but to me it means that people's expectations of me are usually pretty high. Too high. If performance is always an issue, where is the fun? Mailart, for me, is fun. I can make art that is clunky or goofy or bewildering, and it will be ok. I can make flowers or 'pretty' things that no one will mistake for serious art. I can experiment and do poorly with my experiment and it just doesn't matter. NOBODY CARES! And that's one thing I love most.

Sometimes I can only look through the main photo gallery, making comments on some of the art that's coming and going, because I have to postpone making art myself. But that still keeps me in touch with the folks here. The photo gallery is an opportunity to see some of what others are doing, and to express appreciation for some of what I see.

Mailart isn't just one thing, and the IUOMA isn't just one thing, either. I hope that both are a great source of happy for you.

Hugs, Linda

P.S. I now love running camels.

[April Jean Rocco]

That camel is all over the place..so am I in my mail art .