Angels Folk Art Watercolor painting "Christ the Lord is Risen" Handpainted postcard dated 1914

Hand Painted Folk Art Postcard by Maud Hubler 1914 Collection Jim Linderman / Dull Tool Dim Bulb

Manipulated Hand Made Postcards 1910 Folk Art for the Guys Back at Work

Three hand-colored and handmade postcards mailed in sequence in 1910.  Newspaper comic panels of Happy Hooligan (or a Happy Hooliganish spin-off) affixed to a card, then personalized with color and written references to friends or co-workers.  The address side encourages the recipient to "share with the mail boys at the Ambridge Bridge Company in PA.  Odd, but industrious! 

Collection Jim Linderman.  For similar, see the book (and e-book) Eccentric Folk Art Drawings of the 19th and 20th Century available from Blurb.com.

The Philosophical Underpinnings of Mail Art (and some advice from my mother)

Receiving a hand-decorated piece of mail from a loved one is always a pleasant surprise. Unfortunately, it is a practice falling by the wayside along with everything else done by hand. You can "personalize" an email but must use freehand software...or all you are doing is selecting a pre-designed piece of digitized junk some programmer thought was cute. And you are probably downloading it from a company stealing your IP address. If it blinks, squeaks, dances or wiggles it is even worse.

Also annoying is when mail art becomes a "movement" with philosophical underpinnings like Dada, Fluxus, Merz, the Mail Art Network and such. I know there are all sorts of rational artistic justifications for the practice but it seems for the most part to be made up of people who are a little too impressed with their own cleverness. (And those who like to tease the post office, which along with the public library is one of the few true bargains left) Want a conceptual foundation from my mother? To get mail, you have to send mail. Not deep, but true.

Group of Handmade envelopes, postcards, etc. c. 1900-1940. Collection Jim Linderman