I Miss Mail Art!

I recently had the opportunity to look through my rather sizable collection of mail art, in search of a few pieces to use in a current project. It's been a while since I was an active participant in the mail art community and seeing all that postal goodness again really made me miss the good old days.

The days when the most fabulous, fun, creative, odd, and intriguing items would randomly show up from parts unknown.

The days when the simple act of opening the mailbox was the highlight of my day. Nowadays--not so much.
 

This piece made me smile. I created a series of postcards called "operation lost and found" and asked artists to send me items that they found wherever they happened to be. I guess it's not surprising that years later I would name my blog Lost and Found.

So what prompted this little trip down memory lane?  The new class that I'm taking called "Thinking Inside the Box." We are examining the box as an art form and building our own boxes from the ground up as part of the process! I've never built anything before in my life, so this has been a totally new experience for me. Our first project is a box with a hinged lid.

I'm not sure if I should feel extreme pride or embarrassment posting this photo of my little pine box in progress. I have a whole new appreciation for woodworkers and I'm beginning to understand why people feel so attached to the pitiful birdhouses, shelves, and benches they made in high school wood shop.

I'm planning to fashion my box after the fluxus fluxkits of George Maciunas and fill it inside and out with mail art from my collection. This week we're going to start building our second box which will be a glass-fronted shadow box similar to those of Joseph Cornell. For the next few weeks I'll probably be working on both projects simultaneously. Maybe after that I can find the time to work on a little mail art.