MAIL ART 12/13 | moretea

Mail Art 2012-13 by Karen Shaw

Drawing on an envelope is an excellent idea for giving a small scale task to somebody to get them thinking about drawing. The ground is not a blank white rectangle and the context of the actual envelope can suggest any number of design ideas for drawing.

Mail Art #1: In response to the Mail Art brief in Summer 2012 I developed a few spin-offs using 'Mail Art' as a theme. The first was a 'Russian Doll' idea where the chain started with me sending out a series of small envelopes with an illustrated 'Russian Doll' plus a list of addresses to send on to. If you wanted to set this up yourself here is the template for the first doll- don't forget to put your own address at the end of the 'chain' so that you will receive the complete set.

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Mail Art #2: Another idea was to use 'personal ads' as a starter to get the drawing going- again, the postcard had a list accompanying it to allow multiple participants to draw in response to the words in the personal ad. If you were to reproduce this idea in the classroom, just proofread the classified ads first, or maybe start the drawing off for the class yourself.

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Mail Art #3: Using the 'window' of the envelope to represent a physical window was another idea that led to a Tenement Flat collaboration- to recreate this idea draw a linking shape across a set of plain envelopes, eg a ladder or drainpipe, and number the backs of the envelopes. Send out instructions when you post the envelope on- to draw a tennement exterior and return it. Here is what we created:

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(Mail Art 4 and 5 to follow)