Before I sent mail-art
I sent mail. I sent a lot of mail and for many years. I mostly sent to my closest
friends. Sometimes those items would be simple greeting cards and other times
they’d be slightly modified postcards. For almost all of my trips of any length
I’d send out simple postcards. (This activity came from my great aunt who sent
me cards for years) If the trips were longer than a week or two, I carried a
notebook that I would write about the day’s events. I’d stick random ephemera
on the front and back covers. In every one of those books I’d have a page
dedicated to addresses. From the road I’d send postcards to friends and family
with strange messages on them. I’d keep count of how many I sent to each person
as I went along. This sort of “counting” continues today with friends and
family as well as my mail-art correspondents.
All of this started pretty
early, around 2000, maybe a little earlier. This means that some of my oldest
friends have received strange mail from me for close to twenty years. I was
sitting at home one day thinking about what this would look like collected. I
wondered how many people actually kept these items and how they stored them.
In a moment of pure
vanity I sent a message out to three friends I thought might have kept a few of
these things. I asked them if they’d send me video of the collection, something
I could piece together in a short YouTube clip. I didn’t want to press things
too much. I didn’t want them to feel like they had to comply. I didn’t want
them to feel guilty if they hadn’t saved any of the items.
Maybe it’s not vanity,
maybe it’s something else? With mail-artists you expect an item in return, but
with my friends I don’t. If I sent to a mail-artist over and over with no reply
I’d stop sending. With friends you send and hope they get a kick out of it, and
that’s pretty much it. If they get a chuckle then I’m happy, that was the
purpose. Occasionally someone will send me a card in return but that’s a super
rare instance. I cherish those cards, they’re mostly postcards. I’ve kept every
postcard or altered bit of mail (one budding mail-artist is my over seventy
aunt and uncle) that has ever been sent to me. I keep them all.
Bruce was the first
(I’ll share his work later) to send me a video of the collection. He said years
ago that he was collecting everything in a photo album. I’ve sent to Bruce at
multiple addresses in multiple states for eight or nine years. I send my
stranger things to Bruce, things I know wouldn’t fly with the strangers that
make up the majority of my mail-art correspondents. I don’t want to freak them
out too much, or at least not offend them by sending the back of an opened pair
of scissors that’s outline looks exactly like a penis. I know Bruce will like
that sort of thing.
The video that I’ve
shared here comes from my friend Stef. She currently lives in Durham North
Carolina. Out of all my friends I have sent more items to her than anyone else.
Just look at the video, it’s kind of crazy but also spectacular to see it all
displayed like that. It really is a lot of shit, a lot of time for such
silliness. I met Stef my sophomore year in high school. I probably started
mailing things to her when she started college in 2000. Some of the mail
presented in the video may go back almost seventeen years, which is undeniably
awesome. That’s a lot of trashy mail. It’s heartwarming knowing she kept it all.
Stef…the five different
envelopes that look exactly the same contained all of the Grayson focused work.
Since some of them had a little nudity I thought it was best to clothe them in
an envelope.
If anyone else is
interested in sharing their archive that would be great.
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