Connecting Through Mail Art
Since the start of social distancing, students working with Anne Thompson, Visual Arts faculty member and Usdan Gallery Director and Curator, have been making mail art, a time-honored practice in which artists use the postal service to subvert institutional structures and restrictive conditions.
During Spring 2020, sequestered students sent mail art to each other all over the country as part of the course Delights of Ephemera.
This term, for Fall 2020, the work of the Mail Art course has taken on heightened meaning amid the crisis surrounding the USPS and mail-in voting, with readings and discussions focused on the history of the mail as a vehicle for political expression.
COVID-era student mail art projects are being archived in Crossett Library and can be found online.
Featured image by Charlotte Zinsser ’21