Description

This calendar, in date book form, came about during the time I got to know prominent members of the Mail Art community in Los Angeles. I’d been making and collecting postcards for awhile by then and got involved with some very committed Mail Artists and their extended communities in many parts of the world. Mail artists tend to be eccentric and prolific, liking to communicate with other artists through the postal system.

Mail Art comes in all sizes and shapes, though it’s mostly two-dimensional and sized to fit standard mailboxes. According to Wikipedia, “the term ‘mail art’ can refer to an individual message, the medium through which it is sent, and an art movement.

An amorphous international mail art network, involving thousands of participants in over fifty countries, evolved between the 1950s and the 1990s. It was influenced by other movements, including Dada and Fluxus.

One theme in mail art is that of commerce-free exchange; early mail art was, in part, a snub of gallery art, juried shows, and exclusivity in art.” I could relate to that aspect of the movement very easily, having found few outlets showing documentary photography, considered passe by many “art photography” gallery owners at the time.

In May 1983 I mailed over five hundred invitations to artists worldwide. Participants could make art about one of the themes or combine all three if they wished. By the deadline I received over two hundred responses. These were narrowed to fifty-two works for the datebook. All Mail Art received was displayed in a show in a Los Angeles gallery during July and August 1984.

Exene Cervenka created fifty-two unique weekly calendars annotated with dates and other information. Calendar measures 5.5″ x 7″. A few dozen of the 1,500 date books produced remain available for purchase.

Sample Graphics

Buy the Calendar

$50.00