A movie about people making mail

Last year I came across a documentary (that you can watch online for free) called Making Mail. It is about a group of artists who use the postal service to share their art with each other and with strangers, all over the world.

It’s quite fascinating because it seems as though every time a new generation discovers mail-art, they think they are the first and they think they are alone.

I mean here was I (and I’m no artist but go with me because I’ll get to my point) painting the mail I send to you guys just because it was fun and I wanted it to look nice, and not knowing that anyone else was doing this, let alone that there was a whole movement around decorated mail, called “mail art.”

And then you watch this documentary and you first see a group of university students who stumbled upon the same realisations. They would write to each other, and try to find ways to make the mail as creative and interesting and interactive for the recipients as possible, just because.

And just when you think “Ok! They are doing this too, and they stumbled upon it in the same unexpected way as me!” the documentary interviews an artist couple who discovered mail-art in the 1970s. Again, by accident, without realising anyone else was doing it.

“I thought I had discovered the wheel,” one artist said, but then he was put in touch with Ray Johnson, a man who is now, with the benefit of history and academic hindsight, considered the father of “mail art” as a movement.

The nature of mail-art is that it’s personal. Art, sent just from one person, to another person. There’s not a lot of exposure in that! So it makes sense that it remains a fairly underground movement, and it’s entirely possible that in this shrinking world, there could be pockets of people still “discovering” this fun way of using the post, without realising that it has been done elsewhere and before.

Of course there were exhibitions - still are - for mail-art. Submissions invited and sent from all over the world and, most often, there are no rules. That’s one of the beautiful things about “mail-art” as a form of creative expression: once you discover there is a community out there, you also discover that the community fiercely protects its anti-art dedication to “no rules and no refusals.” Do what you like. No-one can tell you it’s not art.

Maybe the relatively-secret, underground existence of mail-art is about to change. After all, there’s only so many people who can avoid seeing the Internet, as time goes by.

But in the meantime, try watching Making Mail. It’s entertaining, interesting, and above all inspiring. Once you finish watching this little film, you will be itching to bust out the paints and gel pens and craft supplies, and send somebody a surprise letter.

Queen of the universe

“She wasn’t doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.” ~ JD Salinger, “A Girl I Knew” Sometimes do you feel like you are trying - and failing - to hold the universe together? I don’t mean the WHOLE universe, of course (now wouldn’t THAT be a task), but the universe of your life, whatever that may be. Your job, your family, your home, your health, your friends, your creative ambitions, your grand plans, your pets, your breakfast… that kind of thing.

Yep, me too. It’s a big job, isn’t it, universal maintenance. Should we learn to let go a little? Maybe. Or maybe not.

Last week I was sick at the same time as my children were sick and that was… challenging… especially as it came on the back of about a month of bad and broken sleep, and descended only two weeks after I’d recovered from a prolonged cough that had racked me to the core.

It felt like forever that I’d been “normal” and when I came downstairs last Friday, still unwell but definitely on the mend and at least able to stand without wobbling and (more important) able to keep down a cup of tea, the first thing I wanted to do was to regain control of my own little universe.

After successfully getting the kids off to daycare (anyone with toddlers knows what a mammoth task that is in its own right), that meant tidying the house so that I could find enough surfaces to clean and scrub the house, following the rigours it had endured of small children being looked after by their father. It meant stock-taking the contents of the ‘fridge, sadly depleted. It meant dusting off the pile of briefing notes and research on my desk, apologetically emailing neglected editors and clients, and writing up a task-list with associated deadlines on my whiteboard.

And so on and so forth. None of those tasks was particularly fun, and not how I wanted to spend my time. How I really wanted to spend my time was in writing and drawing and painting. Or, if I was still too sick to get creative, I wanted to spend my time under a crocheted rug, watching re-runs of Veronica Mars.

But somehow it was enormously satisfying to be putting my own world - ok my universe - to rights. The life I lead right now might be small, to some. It is small compared to my past, even, filled with the domestic mundanity of life with small children and a part-time job that I do from home, trudging through the same kind of writing I was doing more than a decade ago.

But in this little universe, I am Queen. This life is MINE and I have chosen it and I am in charge of it, and that feels GOOD.

Even when I’m on my hands and knees, scrubbing something unidentifiable off the playroom floor.

How is your universe holding up?

Lovely, dreamy girl image is by Schlomit Wolf, licensed for unconditional use under Creative Commons

How I overcome creative block

How do you overcome creative block? Here is a trick that always works for me.

To start, I go for a walk while listening to music (the music can be Tracy Chapman, or Bob Dylan, or Lamb, or something classical. I don’t tend to choose anything else because for whatever reason, for me these artists/genres don't get in the WAY of other creativity - do you know what I mean? This is also the ONLY music I can stand listening to while I’m writing creatively).

Anyway, I let my walk take me to the art gallery. When I’m there, I wander around looking at the paintings and sculptures and thinking about them or not thinking about them as the mood takes me. I don’t force anything. But (and this is very important) I keep the music going. I have it turned up loud enough, inside my headphones, that the other sounds of the world and the gallery all but recede into nothing.

I don’t know what it is, something perhaps about the combination of music and art and exercise I imagine, that triggers the creative side of my brain. So far, this trick has never failed me. I always walk home creatively unblocked, and brimming with new ideas.

If I'm not close to an art gallery, I still go for a walk while listening to music, but instead I bring my camera and take photographs. I notice different things through the camera lens when I'm inside the soundtrack of my walk.

How about you? How do you combat creative block?

Image credit: photo by S Zolkin, licensed under Creative Commons