I’m picking up on a rewarding pastime again, one that I started doing way, way back in the 1990s – sending perfect strangers perfectly strange things through the US mails! Would you like me to send some your way?
I think the mail art/correspondence art*** thing ***,as such, got its start in like the 1970s (but I’m sure the notion of making weird and wonderful things and mailing them to other people is as old as the idea of postal service). The way it works is simple as syrup: one makes something that can be sent via the regular mail (I do hand-painted and collaged postcards mostly) and posts it off to a like-minded somebody who (ideally) does the same and sends their own crafty creations to the original individual. It really works! Back when I was first active, I was getting strange, beautiful, puzzling and comical items in the mail nearly every day; made some ace friends and interesting acquaintances that way too.
There’s a lot of information about it on the Interwebs if anyone’s interest is hereby piqued.
That, then, was then. Now it’s now, and recently I decided to start creating peculiar postcards, copy-machine curiosities, and puzzling packages once again, and sending them to whoever–just whoever.
Which brings me to my point, such as it is. I figure there must be some other Dopers who are into surprising people through the US mails, and who might like to swap swag with the enigmatic and extreme DeLuxness that is myself, maybe? If you’re interested, drop me a PM or e-mail me, and we’ll work something out. I understand peoples’ possible reluctance to make a surface mail address semi-public, but if anyone’s down with it, let’s lick some stamps and post some cards.
I’ve never heard of this but I am intrigued. Reading the title my mind immediately leapt to the decorated envelopes that I associate with mail sent from penal institutions (in the US, anyway.)
If you send stuff to random people, what’s the payoff? I would at least want to know if they loved, liked or hated what I sent.
This is awesome, and I wish you all the best. A word of caution that this pastime might not be as carefree as it was in the 90s. I had a friend doing mail art back then. (RIP, C.) Post 9/11, I got an unfriendly visit from some USPS crimebusters holding two of his envelopes. (His stuff was kinda scary sometimes: a lot of surgical stitching and cryptic comments about the contents.)
My dad was a life-long member of the Knights of Columbus. Back in the Seventies, one of his Brother Knights was this old Italian guy, who illuminated the envelopes of just about every piece of correspondence he sent, using pens with calligraphy nibs and four or five colors of ink. Beautiful thngs they were.
I never knew what he wrote letters about, but when the mail included something he had sent, it was a real treat.
Sending strange unsolicited mail to total strangers sounds like a pretty hilarious prank, but like you just said, the recipients’ reactions would be forever unknown.
One probably wouldn’t want to do this, actually. Waste of glue, stamps and whatever, and where’s the egotistical gratification in that?
There are lists of contact addresses out there; the mail artists copy them and pass them along; these being modern times and all, one can also surf the nets and webs and like that in search of interested and interested parties.
I think I might’ve traded some stuff with that guy! I used to make and mail some unnerving grotesque and/or horrific material on occasion too.
Like my 3’x2’ (yes, feet. Theoretically, one can send anything that one can pay postage on) megapostcard for a JFK’s Birthday art show in Dallas. I used stiff cardstock and made an image of an 8 armed Kali or Durga or Hip Death Goddess with auto headlights for eyes and a bloodied limo grill for a mouth, and she was juggling bullets and bloody JFK heads and shit like that.
Of course, one can’t send pix of naked death goddess tits out in the open, because that’s obscene, so I painted a nice pink dress on her, with a chapeau to match.