Special Delivery : ‘Mail Art’ Features Works Sent Through the Postal System

“Absolutely anybody can become a mail artist,” says Judith A. Hoffberg, a writer and curator who is considered an international authority on the art form.

And Hoffberg may have proved that with her latest project, a mammoth exhibition that includes so many works that it took 11 days just to hang it in Pasadena’s spacious Armory Center for the Arts. About 800 objects created by 515 artists from 31 countries are featured in “Freedom: The International Mail Art Exhibition,” a sometimes overwhelming and often fascinating show that ranges from children’s drawings on envelopes to intricate conceptual and sculptural pieces whose delicacy boggles the mind of anyone who has ever opened torn, mangled or otherwise damaged mail.

There are no set definitions of what constitutes mail art, and basically anything sent through the mail qualifies, according to Hoffberg. Although some of the artworks are mailed inside an envelope or other packaging, often the packaging and postage stamps are a major element of the art itself. Several pieces in the exhibition feature several dollars worth of 1-cent stamps.

Among the works on display:

* A local Pasadena artist’s definitions of freedom, scribbled around the circumference of a classroom-sized globe, with a concealed audiotape that recites answers to the question “What is freedom?” The globe was mailed “as is,” with postage and the Armory’s address affixed right over the continents.

* A series of photographs taken during the failed Soviet military coup, mailed with a number of large Lenin stamps by a member of Russia’s “criminal police.”

* An Argentine artist’s series of six handmade postcards dealing with political themes such as Christopher Columbus and genocide, arranged as markers on a signpost.

* A fully framed still-life painting, executed in dark, rusty colors, shipped through the mail as-is from Altadena, with the address and stamps placed directly on the painting.

* A local artist’s “What does it mean for women to be free in America?” created from a box of New Freedom panty-liners where each pad bears the label of an aspect of women’s lives such as job discrimination, glass ceiling, sexual harassment or date rape.

* And a piece of literal “junk mail”--an intricate scale model of an actual Chinese junk, mounted on a cardboard base and mailed as is with the postage and address affixed to the base.

“The first thing we did when we started on the show was to go and talk to the (Pasadena) Central Post Office,” said Hoffberg, who is editor and publisher of the artworld newsletter Umbrella. “We wanted to warn them about the kind of things they’d be getting. I didn’t think they’d be very enthusiastic, but I figured that they still needed to be forewarned. Well, it turned out they were so enthusiastic about the idea that they gave us a large display case in the post office to keep some of the works.”

Despite the added weight and bulk of some of the objects, mailman Mom Cheng said he would gladly participate in such a show again: “It was really fun, and I love to see the mail that comes here. And that’s our job, you know, to get it here every time, carefully, and with nothing broken.”

Hoffberg noted that many of the artists included in “Freedom” come from an international network of mail artists, many of whom spend several hours each day working on the artform and send their art under special “handles” other than their own names.

“There’s probably 1,000 to 3,000 artists who do this all of the time, but a lot of them just do it one-to-one and you never hear about it,” said Hoffberg, who “got on the network” in 1978 after curating a show of book works that introduced her to mail artists specializing in handmade postcards. “Mail art is free--there’s no marketability, no judge and no jury. But there is an obligation, once you get into the network, of keeping the works in order, and taking good care of them, because we have no other archive system to preserve it.”

While preservation is often a paramount concern in other mediums, Hoffberg noted that that’s not the case with mail art, where most of the artists are virtually unknown outside of the network.

“You don’t do it for fame; you don’t do it for fortune; you just do it for fun,” she said. “Mail artists send something through the mail, and they don’t necessarily know where it’s going or what’s going to happen to it, and the wonderful thing is that they don’t really care--they made it to communicate an idea, not to be this precious piece of art that has to be cared for. . . . The beautiful thing is that nobody’s famous in mail art . . . it really kind of brings you down to size.”

Mail art is believed to have been created by New York artist Ray Johnson, who in the 1950s mailed artworks to his friends and others, asking them to add to the works and return them. And it was Johnson, in 1970, who co-organized the first major mail art show, “The New York Correspondance (sic) School Exhibition,” at New York’s Whitney Museum of American Art.

About 100 mail art shows are held internationally each year, most of them crammed into tiny, one-room venues, Hoffberg said. Mail art is still relatively unknown locally, she said, noting that “Freedom” is one of the largest exhibitions on the subject held to date.

The works in “Freedom” are grouped thematically--into sections dealing with various ideas of freedom--women’s issues, political freedoms, works using prison and cage imagery, religion and so on. At the rear of the gallery is a room for hands-on activity--materials are laid out for visitors to create their own mail art, and a schedule of upcoming events where the finished piece can be sent is provided.

The Armory has not yet decided what to do with the works following the exhibition, although an auction of the most interesting pieces is being considered.

The Armory has scheduled several related programs, including free tours every Thursday through Sunday at 12:30 p.m.; a conversation with several mail artists on May 3, and a mail art workshop for families, also on May 3.

“Freedom: The International Mail Art Exhibition,” at the Armory Center for the Arts, 145 N. Raymond Ave., Pasadena, (818) 792-5101, through May 10. Closed Mondays.