Mail art.

Some artists draw on paper; some create on canvas. Some artists, however, regard any clean surface as a potentially dynamic surface. Graphic artists, such as Jean Michel Folon and Milton Glaser, free themselves from the rigors of day-to-day communication and design work by exchanging illuminated envelopes resulting in first class mail.

The Designs of Yesterday

The decorated envelope can be traced back to the beginnings of postal history. Before government-sponsored postal systems, it was customary for the sender to garnish an envelope with a special personal impression formally pressed into sealing wax. The introduction of the postage stamp and the onset of the industrial revolution brought a surge in the art of the decorated letter. Business stationary from this period often portrayed exquisite line drawings of popular products and services. Large corporations often had elaborate pictures of the head office as cachets. Imperial envelopes celebrating the reigning monarch were available for pennies wherever stationary. was sold.

There were no stringent postal regulations governing how much of an envelope could be decorated as there are today. Commercial artists had virtually the entire surface with which to work. Many of these turn-of-the-century efforts would typically take up one-third to one-half of the face of the envelope. Many designs took advantage of new letter forms spawned by the invention of lithographic printing. Although these envelopes were commercial by nature, they marked the beginning of the mail art phenomenon and are sought after by collectors today.

The Designs of Today

Today's business stationary tends to be far more modest when compared to the envelopes of seventy years ago. Contemporary commercial designs must accommodate a space for bar coding that facilitates the sorting and distribution of mail. Thus, corporate artwork tends to be smaller and concentrated in the upper left quadrant of the envelope.

Mail art today seems to be confined to artists, illustrators, and those of us who find it difficult to ignore the inviting surface of a blank envelope. Following an introduction to mail art, grade nine, ten, and eleven students were ready to start their own mail art project

I encouraged the students to work thematically and to concentrate on integrating commemorative and definitive postage stamps with their envelope designs. Reference materials with pictures of recent commemorative postage stamps were made available to students.

To render their designs, the students first stuffed each envelope with a carefully fitted card. Then, they used a variety of media, ranging from watercolor pencils to crayons, pastels, rubber stamps, tempera, gouache, and even commercial stickers. Each piece of mail art bore the amount of postage required for first class mail and was properly addressed with name, address, and postal code information. Completed projects were taken to the local post office for cancellation and mailing.

The Assignment

There seem to be a few creative directions that mail art can take: 1. Integrating the stamp or stamps with whatever theme the artist has decided to pursue. There are stamps that deal with almost every conceivable subject. 2. The creation of a graphic device to frame the name of the addressee. 3. Utilizing collage and custom-made rubber stamps.

Remember, mail art must: 1. reflect a selected theme or approach; 2. allow a place to address the envelope; 3. allow a place for postage.

You may use stamps from another country, but you must have enough postage in your own country's stamps for the envelope to go through the mail. You must address it to yourself and submit for grading the cancelled envelope that comes to your home.