I’ve always tallied up the amount of mail that comes in and goes out. No idea why I do this?
The 2024 Tally
Here is the pattern. I get mail out of the post office box, open it up, put it in a wicker basket under my TV, and then take it upstairs to count when the basket fills up. I note each piece from every mail artist. At the end of the year I put together a tally of what I’ve received. I also do this for what I send out. Normally I send out a giant pile of stuff at one time and not to any particular person. Some of the work could have been sitting for two weeks or two months, I make a lot so it tends to pile. I go to my address book and then go through the tally, focusing on the ones that show a mild imbalance of mail. I mail to them first. If I have something special to send out I’ll mail that to specific folks whenever I’m done with that piece. After putting the addresses on, I add the amount I sent to the overall total and at the end of the year I add it all up.
So…by this logic, I received 442 things and mailed 414. However, this isn’t correct.
The numbers aren’t right. While the received amount is probably on point, or at least close to it, the amount I’ve sent in 2024 is way off. Most weeks I send a random piece to this specific person, a reply, a letter, something bigger that doesn’t always get counted. If there’s not an original collage in the bunch I don’t always count that either. I feel like I’m cheating people if there’s not something original in an envelope. But none of that is the biggest discrepancy, friends and family are. I don’t count the mail art (collages, cards either original or “professionally printed”) that I send to friends and family. I don’t count those because I never get anything back from them. In a calendar year I get maybe four postcards from folks I personally know, and then maybe ten Christmas cards at the end of the year. Not worth keeping a tally. No problem, I don’t expect anything in return, it’s just what I do.
However, the amount I send to friends and family can be a lot. For some folks I sent ten to fifteen cards / mailings / pieces of garbage a year. That amount could be sent to as many as thirty or forty people. That’s a lot of mail! Anyway, basically I’m saying that I send out a lot of stuff in a year and it’s almost impossible to keep it all straight. No one needs this information, I just like collecting it. By the way, I keep two address books, one for mail-artists and one for friends and family.
In thinking back on this past year of mail-art (my focus for this post…I guess) I’m struck by the amount. I send too much. I really should pull back a bit. I know it’s not a typical new year’s resolution to do less, but I feel like I should. Not make less, just send less. So much of what I receive is underwhelming that I shouldn’t feel guilty if I’m not responding quickly and in kind. I’ll get to you at some point, but I’m tired of trying to keep up because of my own ridiculously imposed rules.
Some of the ways I’m going to limit my post is to step up my little library drop offs. Whenever the local thrift stores have sales on frames, I can get them for cheaper than what a stamp costs. I can put the collage in a frame, drop it off to a little library, and walk away. It’s almost the exact feeling as putting a stamp on something and then dropping it in the mail, but I tend to get weird responses from the libraries, almost exclusively bad. Provoking a rare little library response is a lot more rewording than the overall ambivalence that comes from mailing something. People get so mad at something they could break or toss in the trash. I’m giving you a frame, think about it that way.
And more…more rambling goals.
I need to thin out my materials. Being a thrift store junkie is great for finding random pieces, but often you use two or three things but initially buy fifty. You end up with forty-eight things you can’t use. So, for the coming year I’m going to consistently make collage packets for kids and leave them wherever I can. Asking if adults want a bunch of weird paper online never works, no one ever wants them.
I will continue to not listen to people with suggestions about how to monetize my work.
I will continue to not pursue putting my creations on the wall of a “gallery” or public space.
I will continue to assume no one cares about any of this, and make what I want.
I want to do a series of record covers. Not record covers for bands, although I’m more than open to that idea, but recreations of record covers. This might be cuter than anything. I might use Miles as my model. You know, have his head peeking out on a recreation of Fugazi’s Steady Diet of Nothing? Been thinking about doing this for some time but have never made a proper attempt. Low fi and shitty for sure, mainly for the music heads. I don’t normally do cute but why not?
Before my dad died, I had the idea to collect a bunch of my weirdo writing into a big book. I wanted the book to be something of stature. I wanted it to take up some space. No one cares about a digital file they’ll never open. The initial idea was to collect a bunch of my writing over the past 20 years, mostly shorter pieces. No real organization to the thing just a book of weirdo observations, travel writing, and lists. When my dad died this went out the window and I focused on the book (is it a zine, not sure) about him. That took a lot of time to put together, as well as money. I got a few dollars back from that project, but very little compared to how much it cost to print and then mail. Although this wasn’t great, I was initially bothered by losing a few hundred dollars on a project. It wasn’t the end of the world to lose the money because I had it. My cheap ass was worried. No one else is going to publish it or ask me to do it, so I might as well. Next week I’m going to start in on it.
In a similar fashion, (it’s always money) I need to be more active in sending out assemblages to mail-art friends. I need to send them to folks that might appreciate them even if it costs me a whole eight dollars. I need to break the pattern of thinking that volume is the best method. At least doing this will break the monotony of continuous manila envelopes I usually send. Not sure which mail-artists would be interested in a sign that has the word “wiener” on it.
And then there’s the one resolution that is going to be the most challenging. In the coming year, I need to change up the way I make paper collages. The process came about by accident, like most of the things I end up making. I had all of this sticker paper, mostly rejects from businesses laying around. It only made sense to place bits of cut paper to the sticky paper. When I started doing this, I completely moved away from the tape transfer method, something I played around with for years.
When I started making paper collages I found a lane pretty quickly. I was able to come up with something I found acceptable early on. When I found that I could do something with it, I forced myself to keep going. I forced myself to do the same thing over and over again for as long as I could. I knew that working with things in this way would produce different results over time. Now, a few years into playing around with things in this way, I’ve hit a wall. Although I get something I find truly great every now and again, (maybe ten percent of what I make) I’m mostly making the same thing over and over again. I have the main image, mostly of a person, and then squares and rectangles around it. Sometimes, often, I have a word to give context to the main person in question. This needs to change.
In 2025 I plan on breaking out some collage books to get more ideas. I need to work in some paint, maybe some stencils, maybe some tape transfers, but something new. Maybe I’ll try and copy a lot of other collages that I enjoy. Work with cardboard? Not sure I want to get out an exacto-knife and start cutting, that technique is just too pretty for me. I admire people that go in that direction I just don’t have the patience.
If anything, I want to get rid of the line, the dreaded line. I have no idea how to do this or even if other people see the line, but I hate the line. I hate when I put a lot of pieces together and end up with a clear line of where they were taped to each other. It’s like an addition to a building where you can tell the new part from the old. When I see this I immediately hate whatever I’ve created simply because I can see where it came together. Instead of the piece looking like a collection of small bits to me, it looks like a sloppy house addition. I’ve tried cutting things on angle but that just makes it look an ariel-view of a well-planned city.
Lines, lines, everywhere lines.
I will find a way to get rid of the line.
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