Cool Place Alert: Mail Art at Central Library
Submitted by crafty-admin on January 2, 2008 - 9:58am.
Cool Place Alerts | DIY Alert Blog
A really cool art show has just opened at Central Library in downtown Portland. It's a Mail Art show. What is Mail Art, you ask? Well . . . .
Mail Art is any piece of art that uses the Postal Service as part of its creation. It can take lots of forms - postcards, zines, letters, artistamps and more. The artist then mails these pieces of art to other artists, and the postage and Post Office markings become part of the piece.
The history of Mail Art is fascinating. I'd highly recommend a visit to its Wikipedia Entry.
But, back to our local library. Leslie Waygren, a member of the Central Library staff, is also an active Mail Artist, exchanging pieces of art with people all over the world. She came up with the idea of curating a show of Mail Art around the theme of "Library," and then put out an open call for entries. Anyone was welcome to create a postcard and mail it in.
(That's another hallmark of Mail Art, by the way - it's thoroughly democratic. You don't need any formal training or a gallery to be a Mail Artist. Just make something and mail it!)
Leslie received nearly 100 postcards for the show: about a third of them are from Portlanders, and another third from the rest of the U.S. The remaining third came from other countries, bearing all kinds of interesting postmarks.
"The message that seemed to resonate with the Library theme, was how much people love reading, love books, and love the library," says Leslie. "As a library worker, it's really great to hear how much people appreciate the work that we do; and to have that sentiment expressed as art is fabulous."
The diversity of all these postcards expressing "Library" is fascinating. You'll see art about the importance of children reading, and political art, and lists of favorite books, and personal stories of how libraries have affected the artists' lives.
Because the show is so large, Central Library will display half of the postcards for the first half of January, and then re-fill the display cases with the other half for the rest of the month. Or, if you aren't near Central, you can view the whole show online.
To see the show in person, just head for the main floor of Central Library, and look for the two display cases to the left of the grand staircase.
