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Mail art may be the perfect pandemic art form
Learn more about the history of the movement in a retrospective at Winter Park s CFAM
One of several excellent exhibitions currently on display at Rollins College s Cornell Museum,
Pushing the Envelope: Mail Art from the Archives of American Art looks at the secret history of mail art, an anti-fine art movement in which artists, art enthusiasts and conceptual pranksters around the world used the postal service to collaborate and disseminate works far beyond the reach of the gallery or the academy.
Pushing the Envelope is curated by Miriam Kienle, an assistant professor of art history at the University of Kentucky, with the help of some of her intrepid students, with materials sourced from the Smithsonian s extensive holdings. The exhibition has been displayed at the Smithsonian Institute of American Art and other museums, and arrives at Rollins College at an oddly appropriate time.
The daily mail delivery has become a comfort thanks to the depths of the pandemic and working from home, and despite the U.S. Postal Service becoming highly politicized in the 2020 presidential election.
Austin Rich, a Salem-based visual artist, writer, internet-radio host and musician with deep ties to the Eugene area, has turned the humble act of sending and receiving mail into political protest and a commentary on isolation.
As he put it to me the other day, simply sign up for Rich’s mailing list and he’ll deliver “concerts to your mailbox,” in the form of a monthly postcard with original art and a QR code that unlocks digital music.