Mail Art Call

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Art by Michael Harford, 2010

I’ve been on the blogs a while now. I think I actually started in 2005. That means I’m going on my sixth year. I deleted my blog once, and cleaned it out pretty good another time, leaving only posts I thought had significant value. The oldest I have posted on my current blog is from March of 2007.

Some of the sites on my side bar have been there for a long time as well. I haven’t visited everyone in a long time. One of these days I’m going to sit my butt down and go to every blog and make a comment.

Lately, my own blog has made a sort of transition and I dabble in the art of haiku and very amateur photography. In browsing around from here and there, mostly by clicking on a commenters name that I might see often at a blog I might frequent, I have found some fantastic sites and made many new friends.

But I still have many old friends. Some of whom I have had the honor of meeting in the flesh either when I was traveling, or when they were traveling, and stopped over in my neighborhood. On an upcoming journey, I have plans to hopefully meet two or even three or four bloggers that I have only “met” here on these pages.

One such blogger friend is Michael. He calls himself Coffee Messiah. Michael garnered that name as he used to be in the coffee business and has the eye and nose for this important beverage.

A creative selection from Coffee Messiah from his blog

Years ago, I used to sell freshly roasted top quality coffee beans on Ebay, and the name of his blog, also Coffee Messiah, caught my eye. We exchanged back and forth and have been for years now. Last Fall, Michael was in the Minneapolis area and we met for coffee at the J&S Bean Factory, a coffee shop and Roastery in St. Paul that is owned by a very good friend of mine.

Just like I have changed, or rather evolved, from the way I used to blog to the way I participate in blogging now, so has Michael. I’ve been visiting his blog lately and I see he has taken to doing artscapes, or art scenes, cut and pasted on post card sized stock.

Another Messiah original

I went down his side bar and found a blog called Scrapiteria. It is about the art of collage and goes as far as to call the people who do this form a collagist. Scrapiteria is only interested in cut-and-paste artwork. No digital forms. I know I’ll be going back there for more of a look.

In the meantime, Michael, the Coffee Messiah, has put out an Art Call for Mail Art. Mail Art can be found all over the world. It could be called a cultural movement and has been around since the 1960‘s. It involves sending visual art (but also music, sound art, poetry, etc.) through the international postal system. Mail Art has also been called Postal Art or Correspondence Art. In its basic form, I see Mail Art as a post card size work of art. HERE is another site I found with some history and great examples of Mail Art.

At first, when I saw Michael’s Mail Art Call, I didn’t have a lot of interest. But lately, through Michael posting submissions for the call on Facebook, I have seen more and more of it and I kind of like it.

Here is The Coffee Messiah blogsite. He mentions the 2011 Mail Art Call in the first post, but scroll down and see some of the collagist style art that has been submitted or found by Michael. Make sure you scour the side bar and check out the links as well.

Then, go to the Mail Art Call site. It is called The World is a Town. Those words are described as being found in some very old Russian transcripts that date back to the 11th Century. The theme is described and the call is made. Submissions are starting to be delivered to Michael and he is posting them. The ultimate destination for the submissions is an art show, but maybe more might become of it all. More shows, possibly international shows.

I was talking with my twelve year old Grand Daughter. She is the oldest. I showed her the sites about Mail Art and she took off. I had things all over my desktop. I finally put them all into a folder so she could keep all her work together. She is eagerly creating a Mail Art piece to submit to Michael’s call. I have never seen her so enthusiastic about anything, and I love to see her this way.

It was funny how I came to introduce her to Mail Art. A month or so ago, she was drawing these round faces. She was using recycled paper, lined paper. In fact, the paper was the large wide margined lined paper that an early elementary school child might use when first learning how to print.

Anna's first attempt at Mail Art which I find quite impressive

I recalled Ledger Art as done by the plains indians. I told her what I knew, that is, there wasn’t much in the way of paper to draw and paint on, so these resourceful people took to using old ledger book pages. This site has some wonderful examples of Plains Indians Ledger art.

My Grand Daughter’s art looked kind of like the ledger art,or at least mimicked the form by using what she could find, in this case, the lined paper. She had created a series of what she calls, Anna’s faces. Here are a couple of examples of her work.

Ringo the Lizard

I mentioned the Mail Art Call and put the two together. Using her faces to create a submission. She hasn’t stopped yet and is furiously working at creating a piece for submission.

You can tell she is so mature, she uses our names and not Grandma and Grandpa

I am considering taking a shot at creating a piece of Mail Art myself, and since I now have so many ties to some fabulous artists on my own side bar, I hope that they’ll read this, go to Michael’s site and make a submission themselves. From what I have seen over the past year is such marvelous creativity from individuals and art colonies traveling and working together on collaborations and themed projects.

I’m looking forward to seeing the submissions that Michael posts on his blog and anticipate I might recognize some names of the contributers from my own blogroll. I know I’ll see at least one from my Grand Daughter Anna. I’m also hoping that The Coffee Messiah reads this and comments with more information about this project.

It was really good to meet him face-to-face. I’ll be heading down through his neck of the woods one of these days. I’ll have to visit and have a cup of coffee, or maybe tea.

Take care and be well.

Peace