The Mail Art - Internet Link

This thesis examines two threads in the history of mail art: a networking approach dedicated to open participation and a crafted approach dedicated to the art object. It then follows these two threads across three generations. Mail art is an international phenomenon that evolved over the past sixty odd years due to the efforts of a dedicated and growing group of individuals. American artist Ray Johnson and the international artistic group operating under the banner of Fluxus are discussed as establishing mail art as a separate form through their creation of the mail art network. The generation that followed Johnson and Fluxus expanded on the free and open ethos of the mail art network, making it a cornerstone of mail art practice and embracing new technology. Finally, this study examines work by contemporary mail artists who have not yet been historicized and who return to a craft approach in the production of mail art. Using Glenn Adamson's theory of craft, this thesis concludes that craft is an equally pertinent aspect of mail art practice and that, although it is underemphasized in mail art's first two generations, it is a dominant factor in the production of mail art today.

Networking Currents: Mail Art Subjects and Issues was published in 1986 as Chuck Welch's MFA graduate dissertation at Tufts University. Networking Currents is a book that was widely recognized in the 1980s and 1990s as the first critical survey of mail art to present pioneering studies of mail art networking aesthetics and issues. The book was printed in a limited edition of 500 copies and was acquired by The Tate Gallery, MOMA, NYC, Chicago Art Institute and fifty other Special Collections in Fine Arts Libraries around the world.

Cultura: International Journal of Philosophy of …, 2012

This article aims to show that so-called Mail Art (art distributed via the international postal system) is based on five paradoxes. These paradoxes, which correlate to how Mail Art is distributed and exhibited by means of changing technologies, its aesthetics, its democratic ideals, and its transnational character, explain how Mail Art has emerged and been constructed as an artistic medium on the stage of world cultures. While the paradoxes of Mail Art are specific for this particular medium, I argue that all media types are more or less marked by inherent paradoxes. The fact that Mail Art includes all kinds of material, sensorial, spatiotemporal, and semiotic modes makes it an unusual art form, but here it is primarily meant to be an example of the ambiguous ways in which media types in general are delimited and defined.This article aims to show that so-called Mail Art (art distributed via the international postal system) is based on five paradoxes. These paradoxes, which correlate to how Mail Art is distributed and exhibited by means of changing technologies, its aesthetics, its democratic ideals, and its transnational character, explain how Mail Art has emerged and been constructed as an artistic medium on the stage of world cultures. While the paradoxes of Mail Art are specific for this particular medium, I argue that all media types are more or less marked by inherent paradoxes. The fact that Mail Art includes all kinds of material, sensorial, spatiotemporal, and semiotic modes makes it an unusual art form, but here it is primarily meant to be an example of the ambiguous ways in which media types in general are delimited and defined.

Journal of Modern Craft, 2016

Craft has been an important part of mail art practice throughout its relatively short history. While the theoretical underpinnings of the mail art network have been the focus of much of mail art literature due to the political context from which mail art emerged, craft remains almost entirely ignored. However, craft remains an important factor in the production of mail art works exchanged via the postal system, particularly as many contemporary mail artists have returned to a nostalgic handcrafted (i.e. objects made by hand or hand-drawn) way of working as part of a larger exploration into the ways in which communication systems frame our identity and social relationships. In comparing the work of these contemporary mail artists to some of mail art’s earliest and well-known practitioners, craft emerges as a fundamental element in the development of mail art as an artistic genre. While the avant-garde aspects of mail art practice have shifted to reflect a dialog between old and new systems of communication, a hallmark of the current time period, a sustained interest in exploring how these systems frame our identity and relationships continues to unite mail artists across time.

ETERNAL NETWORK: A MAIL ART ANTHOLOGY is the first university press publication in academia to explore the historical roots, aesthetics and new directions of contemporary mail art. The essays of ETERNAL NETWORK were written and assembled during the early 1990s by mail artist, writer, and curator, Chuck Welch. Published in 1995 by University of Calgary Press (Calgary, Alberta, Canada), the edition contains forty illustrated chapters surveying an international community whose mailboxes and computers were a proto internet bridging the analog and digital world of art and communication. ETERNAL NETWORK includes numerous photographs of mailed artifacts, performance events, congresses, stampsheets, posters, collages, artists’ books, visual poetry, computer art, mail art projects, zines, copy art and rubber-stamped images. The book is divided into six parts: Networking Origins, Open Aesthetics, New Directions, Interconnection of Worlds, Communication Issues and Ethereal Realms. Appendixes include mailing addresses from the 1990s, mail art exhibitions, a listing and location of over 350 underground mail art magazines and a comprehensive record of public and private international mail art archives. The late Judith Hoffberg, founder of Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS) and editor of “Umbrella Magazine,” wrote an astute and prophetic review of ETERNAL NETWORK in March 1995. “Some might think that this is the last gasp of a paper-orientated group of artists, but it is more a testament to the future of alternative art and the role of artists as networker”.

ETERNAL NETWORK: A MAIL ART ANTHOLOGY is the first university press publication in academia to explore the historical roots, aesthetics and new directions of contemporary mail art. The essays of ETERNAL NETWORK were written and assembled during the early 1990s by mail artist, writer, and curator, Chuck Welch. Published in 1995 by University of Calgary Press (Calgary, Alberta, Canada), the edition contains forty illustrated chapters surveying an international community whose mailboxes and computers were a proto internet bridging the analog and digital world of art and communication. ETERNAL NETWORK includes numerous photographs of mailed artifacts, performance events, congresses, stampsheets, posters, collages, artists’ books, visual poetry, computer art, mail art projects, zines, copy art and rubber-stamped images. The book is divided into six parts: Networking Origins, Open Aesthetics, New Directions, Interconnection of Worlds, Communication Issues and Ethereal Realms. Appendixes include mailing addresses from the 1990s, mail art exhibitions, a listing and location of over 350 underground mail art magazines and a comprehensive record of public and private international mail art archives. The late Judith Hoffberg, founder of Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS) and editor of “Umbrella Magazine,” wrote an astute and prophetic review of ETERNAL NETWORK in March 1995. “Some might think that this is the last gasp of a paper-orientated group of artists, but it is more a testament to the future of alternative art and the role of artists as networker”.

UNITED in MAIL ART, 2020

UNITED in MAIL ART is a historical survey of mail art from its origins to the present. The co-authored paper is the culmination of a seven-month collaborative writing project between Hans Braumüller (Germany), Ruggero Maggi (Italy), Clemente Padin (Uruguay), and Chuck Welch, (US). Subjects include Mail Art's First "Ism - Neoism, Mail Art Defiance in the Americas, Artists' Survival, Mail Art Projects in the Asia-Pacific, Australia, Europe, and Africa, Mail Art Zines, Archives, and the emergence of mail art media from analog to digital communication.

The author began a trek through the United States and Europe, while she produced artwork and lectured on copy art. She met other mail artists and collaborated with them on some film and audio works for the four months of her tour. The following is her report for UMBRELLA Magazine, a bimonthly newsletter of art news, reviews and art information concerning artists' publications and artists' books.