As part of the Eureka Springs Festival of the Arts in May I am hosting an International Mail Art Show with. The theme for the festival is birds so with that I am having a Birds of a Feather International Mail Art Show.
Artists around the globe are invited to submit a postcard sized art piece through the mail to be included in this International Mail Art Show. The pieces should depict the theme of birds in any media the artist chooses. The show is open to all ages and is not juried. The show will be presented at the Eureka Springs Carnegie Public Library Meeting Room Friday, May 12 with a reception on Saturday, May 13 from 2-4. At the reception visitors will be able to take a piece that they like home for free.
The show will also be online through a Flickr group for participants to see all of the entries. To participate mail your piece of art to: Birds of a Feather, c/o Jacqueline Wolven, 2928 Highway 23N, Eureka Springs AR 72631 USA. The deadline to enter is May 1, 2006.
A History of Mail Art: Mail art is art which uses the postal system as a medium. Mail art is also, simultaneously, a message that is sent, the medium through which it is sent as well as one of the longest-lasting art movements in history. To be precise, an amorphous international mail art network evolved of thousands of participants in over fifty countries between the 1950s and the 1990s from the work of Ray Johnson and influenced by earlier groups, including Dada and Johnson's contemporaries in the Fluxus group. A theme involved in mail art is that of commerce-free exchange; early mail art was, in part, a snub of gallery art, juried shows, and exclusivity in art. A premise of mail art is that "senders receive," meaning that one must not expect mail art to be sent to them unless they are also actively participating in the movement.
Whether one is a formal mail artist, there exists a rich history of creative examples sent through the post to draw upon. The most familiar example is the illustrations on envelopes carrying first day issue postage stamps, which philatelists refer to as first day covers, but mail art encompasses other "decorated envelopes" as well as a wide range of other procedures and media such as rubberstamping and the creation of artistamps. Mail art is traditionally, though not always, distinguished from simply "mailed art," which is art that does not truly use the postal service but is simply regular art when sent through the mail.
