Letter Writers Alliance

Dream Delivery Service

Today we have a special member report on a postal project! Member Margaret L. is a wonder. She's been a guest on book club and is always sending along things to share with the community. Her most recent find is the Dream Delivery Service and her report follows:

Projects involving the mail are numerous, and the “Dream Delivery Service” combines surrealist poetry, dreams, and daily deliveries (through the mail or by bicycle).  When I signed up to have my dreams delivered for November 2016, I wasn’t quite sure what I was in for, but I knew it would be exciting.

Mathias Svalina founded the Dream Delivery Service in 2014. For a month, Svalina writes about forty surrealist dreams during the day, and before dawn delivers them via bike for subscribers within 4 miles of his home base (in the case of Tucson, the Museum of Contemporary Art) or via the postal service if subscribers are outside his range.  The “dreams”, short prose works in the second person (“you see…”, “you find…”), follow the surrealist logic you’d expect from a particularly vivid REM sleep cycle, where things happen suddenly and without obvious cause and effect. Moreover, Svalina doesn’t always keep copies of all of his work, adding an extra ephemeral element to the dreams he produces.

What I found fascinating about this work from a letter writing /postal project perspective was that the delivery (an envelope with a dream printed out on paper every day) was something physical and both deeply personal and impersonal. The mail, or even daily delivery on bicycle, is a mass endeavors where efficiency (forty dreams a day for a month is ~1,200 dreams!) is key for moving all of that physical material. At the same time, the dreams were written so well that they appeared deeply personal, though the only time I chatted in person with Svalina was after the talk he gave at the Museum of Contemporary Art as he launched the project in Tucson.  The merging of the impersonal and personal brought the Dream Delivery Service thematically right into the same realm as using the postal service to make graphic art.

Svalina moves from city to city for each month of the Dream Delivery Service, and for the month of January (2/3 over!) he’s in Marfa, TX. He’ll be travelling to New Orleans and Chicago later this year, and you can follow his progress on his Tumblr: http://dreamdeliveryservice.tumblr.com

There’s also a great interview about his time in Tucson in November here: http://poetry.arizona.edu/blog/speedway-and-swan-episode-31-mathias-svalina

Thanks for the information, Margaret. I really hope I can participate in the project when it gets to Chicago. I hope other members can do the same! 

Yes, but is it Art?

Mail Art. Artistamps. We use the word "art" to define and describe these practices. But should we? Are we wrongly equating our mailings with the importance of paintings on gallery walls? I'll tell you I'm not really troubled by these questions. I think it's art and I don't believe in a war between art and craft. Still, it's a question that a lot of people talk about and even write scholarly articles trying to defend. This article "Cinderella and the Big Monster: Mail Art and the Museum" by Peter van der Meijden goes into great depth on the subject. I encourage you to check it out if you want to ruminate more on the matter. Thanks to Laura for this link! 

P.S. Art by François Colos. 

Fantastical Postcards of Mark Dingo Francisco

I love these postcards (and related postage stamp designs) for the set pieces of Wes Anderson films. The artist is Mark Dingo Francisco, and he has designs for every Wes Anderson film to date. I'm overwhelmed by his talent. What a cool idea, making postcards for imaginary places. Thanks to @mikeschu on Twitter for the link! Remember you can always send a letter, write an email or tweet at us with blog tips.

Lucy Halcomb's Painted Envelopes

I'm a big Instagram-user (Instagrammer?) and am thrilled by how many awesome mail artists there are to follow. I just found the art of Lucy Halcomb and every image is delightful! I think one of the things I like best about mail art is how different it can be for everyone. We're all gonna have stamps and addresses, but there's so many different ways to put it all together. Who else should I be following? Let me know in the comments!

P.S. And just a reminder that the latest R.S.V.P. package goes on sale today! 

Postal Perfect Instagrams

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I'm a big fan of Instagram. I find inspiration there all the time. I thought I'd share my favorite postally inspiring accounts with you, and I hope you'll share some of your suggestions with me! (Image creators listed and linked from left to right.)

Image 1- Anna Remarchuk: a poster of exquisite floral compositions and originator of the "envelope series" where she photographs objects bursting forth from envelopes. 

Image 2- Present & Correct: a wonderful gem of a shop which presents stationery items with precision and care. Also great at finding design lines in everyday life. 

Image 3- Lindsey Bugbee: calligrapher of the Postman's Knock blog. She does delightful things with addressing envelopes and often has tutorials.

Image 4- US Postal Service: official Instagram of the U.S.P.S. I'm very fond of their #throwbackthursday (#tbt) posts and I also like seeing the bones and guts of how my mail gets where it's going.

I'd love to know who inspires you from a postal perspective on Instagram. Please share your favorites in the comments!

 

Letters to Myself: The Calligraphic First Day Covers of Alan A. Blackman

Through the magic of an Instagram tag by L.W.A. member Emily, I learned about this exhibit of mail art at the San Francisco Public Library. The Book Arts & Special Collections Center is pleased to present the exhibition "Letters To Myself: The Calligraphic First Day Covers of Alan A. Blackman." In the Jewett Gallery, Lower Level, Main Library, 26 July through 11 October 2015.

The Social Correspondence blog has more: 

"Through his work in the postal service, Blackman became familiar with “first day covers,” letters affixed with a stamp on its first day of release and mailed from the city from which the stamp originated. Each such letter is stamped with the cancellation FIRST DAY OF ISSUE, as well as the date and city of origin.

For every letter that Blackman sent to his son, he sent a similar one to himself. Using the stamp design as a starting point, he hand-addressed the letter in beautifully colored calligraphic design, each cover compatible or related to the design of the stamp. Over the years, his calligraphic envelopes became more elaborate and theme oriented."

I do hope some of you take advantage of the exhibit. Clearly, we need to move to San Francisco. Or be more active in setting up mail art exhibits and functions. Both of those statements seem like a lot of work. For now, back to letter writing!

Letters Left in London

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Twitter user left me a link to Letters Left in London. Whoever is running it is leaving anonymous letters of encouragement around London. They post the letters on Tumblr and Facebook. I wonder how the finders/readers feel. There've been almost 300 letters left around London so far.

I like all random acts of kindness, and I like them even more when they are epistolary in nature. Would you write anonymous letters? Have you found an anonymous letter? 

Missing Post Office

The Missing Post Office was created by artist Saya Kubota as a part of the Setouchi Art Festival in 2013. Housed in an actual disused post office and staffed by the artist and a retired postal director, Missing Post Office has many of the hallmarks of an actual post office. There are uniforms and familiar symbols. The central piece of the post office is the "Drifting P.O. Box" which houses messages on post cards which can be read by any visitor. The messages may be written to anyone or thing. The artist compares it to writing messages in bottles, but instead of releasing them into the ocean, the Missing Post Office will keep those messages safe until they find their proper readers via serendipity. It is a curious system, but touching and thoughtful. I especially liked this story about the postcards addressed to Kota.  The Missing Post Office is still open. You can submit messages (in postcard form only) to the project at: 

Missing Post Office (Hyoryu Yubinkyoku)
〒769-1108
Hyoryu Yubinkyoku Dome
Awashima 1317-2, Takuma Town, Mitoyo City, Kagawa Prefecture

Letter Socials, Past & Future

We had a blast at our social on Sunday, May 3rd. It was a real treat having a full house at the studio as well as our online participation. If you missed it, feel free to recreate it by watching the video on our YouTube page. Be warned, I have OPINIONS about stamps.

We have another social coming up later this month. This will be an in-person social at Uncle Art Gallery on Thursday, May 28th at 7PM. What's more, the gallery is holding a mail art call for a display that evening. If you can't come in person, why not send yourself in letter form? Send them to: Olivia Arrow, PO Box 47023, Chicago, IL 60647

All submissions will be accepted so long as they arrive by the 28th. They will not be returned. In summation, come write letters, come see letters. It'll be fun! 

Do Not Open

The U.S.P.S. Stamps blog introduced me to lettering artist Erik Marinovich and his Do Not Open envelopes project. He creates one-of-a-kind hand-addressed envelopes for a fee. Customers submit the address and he uses his lettering skills and artistry to turn a bubble mailer into treasure instead of the typical trash. I love more than I can really express. What a great way to make the mundane into magic. That is one of the real powers of mail, in my opinion- the reinsertion of wonder into the world. You can hear an interview with Erik about the project here. Great work!