Folk Art Foot Ephemera

The small art of the mailed foot.  Two of these anyway.  The smallest is actually a Lady's Calling Card.  Late 19th / Early 20th Century.  Collection Jim Linderman

Folk Art Mail Art 19th Century Bike and Bridge

Folk Art Mail Art 19th Century. A bike and a bridge! Mailed within New York state, 1888. Collection Jim Linderman

Racist Envelopes Mailed to Florida 1949

The artist from Michigan had a demented view of Florida, but he shared them in a trio of letters to a pair of snowbirds wintering down south.
  
Trio of racist hand drawn postal envelopes sent from Michigan to Florida 1949 
Collection Jim Linderman

Traveling to Unusually Named Cities? Send me some ART MAIL Farmers and Battle Postmarks

Pair of hand drawn cachet art on mailed envelopes.  Note postmark for each.  Early mail art.

Two original drawings on envelopes 1950  Collection Jim Linderman

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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