Mail Art

Received a piece of mail art thirty years ago from my 2D Design teacher at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Shelley Thornton was a visiting instructor filling in for Keith Jacobshagen. I'm sure I still have the piece in a file or box somewhere, but I'm afraid if I start looking for it, I will get sidetracked sorting the personal postal correspondence of my lifetime which fills a giant Rubbermaid storage container, besides being stuffed in all sorts of other boxes and files.

I'm not really one of those barely functioning persons living in a tiny apartment stuffed to the ceiling with newspapers and mail and forty-seven felines. I just like getting and writing letters and postcards. I save everything interesting, but I don't do much with it (so far), beyond hauling it all with me whenever I move.

Shelley Thornton still looks exactly the same as she did thirty years ago. I wonder if she still wears high-top All Stars. The note she sent me was decorated with rubber-stamping and a hand-drawn zipper. I tucked it away as inspiration, and never forgot about it.

A few years ago, which could be any time since 1990, I went to a mail art exhibit at the Art Centre of Plano. The little bug in the back of my brain was reinspired, but too busy being a full-time mom to do anything with it.

So now I have time. That's what I'm up to in visual art these days. So far, the U.S. Postal Service has been kind to my creations and experiments.