Mail Art; First Class Creativity
Almost exactly one year ago, just as the restrictions were beginning to lift, I attended a fantastic workshop led by artist Tracey Meek, exploring her brilliant Art Mail project. The workshop formed part of the Make It Yours Digital Workshops put together by The Justice Museum, Nottingham.
We had all received a parcel a few days before the workshop, which included everything we needed to get stuck in; collage materials, fun prompts and ideas, instructions, glue and scissors.
We spent the virtual session each making our own piece of mail art, learning different collage skills, thinking about the wonderful potential for our mail art pieces to connect us with others, whilst connecting with other creative people.
The concept of Mail Art is to create a collaborative piece of art which is sent around a group of people, each adding their own marks.
At the end of the session, I found myself with a little collaged ‘booklet’. I had included a few key words from the selection sent by Tracey Meek and was sure to leave plenty of empty space for my collaborators.
In April 2021, Thortify ran a mini competition on Instagram to find 4 other people to participate with our Mail Art piece.
We found our people and set about creating our mailing list. I included art materials and mini scissors, collage papers and glue. I also decorated the envelope with stickers and stamps.
The piece has spent the last year travelling around the UK, including Cheshire, Sussex, Nottingham, London and Leicester.
“The beauty of this art mail project is that it grows with each contribution so it merges lots of different styles and types of art, lots of ideas grow and change; a little like a physical version of Chinese whispers.” - Lauren Thortify
The finished piece is a beautiful collection of ideas, thoughts and feelings portrayed in various different ways. When I started the piece, I really remember feeling a hesitance around restrictions lifting and things ‘opening up’ again. I wondered how we could ever go back to normal. Also, what was normal? Is normal something that we wanted to go back to? Or have we found new ways of doing things, connecting with each other and being human. Here are some images of our finished piece of Art Mail, what would you add?
If you’d like to give Art Mail a go yourself, head over to Tracey’s website where you can buy an art mail pack to share with your your friends and family. Stay creative, and don’t forget to share images of your self care adventures using the #selfcarescrapbook tag - We share all posts on our stories.
Peace and paintbrushes
Lauren
