Had you ever heard of a "Mail-Art" Show? Janice Kelsh,
founder of the Miniature Piano Enthusiast Club, was
the guest speaker at the Toy Piano Festival at the University of San Diego on
September 5, 2001. During that
festival, Scott Paulson's Toy Piano Mail-Art Show was highlighted. Scott is with the Toy Piano Library of the
Geisel Library in San Diego. This is a great idea that could be adapted to a
number of other collecting areas to gain promotion for your club or
society...your hobby area...and to foster a different type of member activity.
Scott
Paulson explained, "mail art is a fun medium where people mail handmade
postcards or regular letters as "art." He continued, "At the end
of the summer during the last toy piano recital of the summer season here at
the music library, the audience, while listening to the show, are going to sort
through mail that was sent in by "toy piano people" that relays some
aspect of their interest in toy pianos. We're doing this to help explain the
interest in toy pianos...the mail that we'll get might be a regular letter from
someone with a picture of them with their miniature pianos. Maybe some people
will mail in a baby picture of themselves with a toy piano...maybe some people
will mail a poem...others might send in those great hand-made postcards that
people make with materials from those great rubber stamp/craft stores...even
just a regular old letter can be so touching."
The
Toy Piano Collection at Geisel Library hosted the toy piano themed mail art
show. They invited anyone who chose to participate to send them a hand-made
postcard, poem, photo of themselves with a toy piano, or whatever they deemed
appropriate. The show helped explain the affection and interest in the toy
piano collection at the library. The theme of the show was "Where is your
toy piano?"
Mail
art is a medium founded by famous New York artist Ray Johnson in the 1950's.
Among his diverse arts activities, Johnson mailed small hand-made postcards as
works of art, unsolicited, through the U.S. Postal Service to people. Part of
the aesthetic of this medium is the formality of the delivery and arrival
process (the stamping, postmarking, sorting through many hands, etc. Themed
Mail-Art shows are an outgrowth from Ray Johnson's work. In a themed show, an
organizer sends word through the mail-art community about a theme and a
deadline and an address. There is usually some sort of an opening event where
people are invited to sort through the mail. Those who send mail art know that
they do not get their mail back. It becomes property of the addressee (just
like with anything sent through the postal service). Participants in a themed
mail art show do expect one thing: documentation of the show. Documentation can
be as simple as a thank you note from the organizer and list of the
participants and the participants' addresses. Participants who don't want their
address on the documentation don't list their address on their mail art.
The
Toy Piano Collection at Geisel Library consists of actual instruments, extant
literature, and commissioned scores (composers write works for the instruments
in the collection and toy piano recitals are given among the music stacks.)
For information about more recent mail art shows, or
activities at the Library, please contact The Toy Piano Collection at Geisel
Library, Attn: Scott Paulson 0175-Q, UCSD, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA
92093
