Postcards From Sculptor Carry Messages Via a Piece of the Rock

Nick Agid’s workshop is just a stone’s throw from the Torrance post office.

Good thing, too. When Agid drops a postcard into the mail, it lands with a five-pound thud.

Agid is a sculptor who carves messages on leftover chunks of marble and granite. They become postcards when he adds scratched-on addresses and slaps stamps on the slabs.

Over the past year, he has sent more than a ton of such postcards to 650 friends, fellow artists and selected celebrities whose home addresses he can find. Although he pays heavily for postage--up to $10 for some cards--he gets a stony reception from postal clerks.

“When Nick comes in, we hide,” said postal clerk Betty Baker. “He’s a nice guy. It’s the rocks. They’re heavy and dirty.”

And not too sturdy, weary post office workers have discovered.

Chips of granite have broken off and occasionally fallen into post office conveyor belts. That prompted postal officials last year to threaten to ban the stone cards.

Officials relented, carving a new standard for service in the process. These days, Torrance postal workers sometimes glue slabs back together if they crack apart in mail pouches.

Agid’s return mail has also been heavy.

More than 200 card recipients have written back to comment on what one correspondent labeled “postcards from the ledge.” Because of his rocky relations with Torrance postal workers, Agid uses his Rancho Palos Verdes home as his return address.

Author Charles Bukowski seemed puzzled by the black granite postcard Agid mailed him. “What the hell are you doing with a piece of coal in Palos Verdes?” Bukowski asked. “Now I have it and what the hell will I do with it?”

Actor Gregory Peck responded that he uses his card as a paperweight on his desk. He pledged to be “the temporary caretaker” of “the beautiful stone, which may be as old as the planet and is sure to be here for all time to come.”

Actor Vincent Price turned an old shoe sole into his own postcard for this response: “Upon my soul, I’ve never had such a heavy fan letter--do you still have all your marbles?”

Los Angeles art curator Paula Kendall-Waxman’s reply came in a Chinese food take-out box. Inside was a fortune cookie. Inside the cookie was this printed message: “Beware of a mail carrier with a hernia.”

U.S. Postmaster Gen. Anthony M. Frank said of his stone card: “It’s always a pleasure to be contacted by our customers, especially as one as obviously ‘rock solid’ as you are.”

Richard Brettell, director of the Dallas Museum of Art, mailed back a postcard of his own--carved onto a piece of small walnut wood. “May I ask you not to respond to this card?” it read.

Art dealer Martin S. Blinder of Van Nuys wrote back to ask that “I remain on your permanent mailing list . . . and that you will some day do a similar work utilizing gold bars.”

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) apologized for being slow to respond. “I have been weighted down with my legislative duties . . . I’m am sure that this mode of expression will become an important part of Americana.”

Card recipient Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Lomita), a critic of the National Endowment for the Arts, was less sure. “The only true value something like your brick has, is that which people will voluntarily pay for it. That’s why so many no-talent artists end up seeking grants from the NEA.”

Rohrabacher’s tart response, which closed with an admonition to “have fun but don’t throw bricks at anyone,” is one of Agid’s favorites. Using a photographic engraving process, Agid has enlarged the letter to coffee-table size and engraved it upon a huge granite slab.

The slab rests on legs formed by military surplus nose cones from four Sidewinder missiles. Agid plans to use the table “as a centerpiece people can put their drinks on” when he stages an art gallery show featuring responses to his marble mailings.

“This whole thing started out as a whim because I hate to throw stone out,” said Agid, 31, who has sold conventional sculpture to corporations and to such figures as actor Ernest Borgnine and producer Dick Clark.

“When I found out I could etch postcards that the post office would take, it turned into an art form. I’d go to the library and look up celebrities’ addresses and write them. It became a real adventure to go to the mailbox each day.”

Those on Agid’s mailing list cannot weight for his next letter, either.