Hikmet Şahin is an artist from Turkey, who is working as a faculty member in the Faculty of Fine Arts at Selçuk University, Graphic Design department. He sent us two cards, an hommage to Gabriel Garcia Marquez and his famous novel “100 Years of Solitude” about the several generations of the Buendia family.
“He really had been through death, but he had returned because he could not bear the solitude.” (from “100 Years of Solitude”)
For more about Hikmet’s art, please visit his website.
Derya Avcı is an artist and art teacher from Elazığ in Turkey. She sent us a postcard illustrated with a portrait of Nasreddin Hodja, a 13th-century Turkish satirist and legendary folk jester, a wise fool. His humorous stories and anecdotes, often with an educational storyline, are so popular in that he is a true hero of many generations of Turks as well in many other countries – Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Albania, Bosnia, Greece, China, India, Kurdistan…
Oren Herschander is an artist and writer from New York and he works currently as a researcher and grad student in digital interdisciplinary arts practice at The City College of New York. Only recently he joins mail art networking and posting his art to various projects. He says: “My interactive art hopes to teach us how to ask questions about the universe while encouraging a sense of wonder and curiosity about Everything.” (from Oren’s LinkedIn page).
Oren has sent us a collage postcard called “Unstuck”, inspired by his favourite book “The Slaughterhouse Five” by Kurt Vonnegut, one of the greatest anti-war novels ever written.
“All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I’ve said before, bugs in amber.” (excerpt from the book)
Honoria Starbuck is an artist and art teacher at The Art Institute of Austin, Texas. She is involved in mail art since 1989 and since then her art was shown at various exhibitions and online galleries. Her quick gestures of colour form expressive images that are vivid and rich no matter which material she uses – watercolour, ink, rubber stamps, pencils or acrylic.
Honoria’s postcard is dedicated to Henry Miller’s book “Paint As You Like And Die Happy” (an abstract chickenoid).
Clemente Padin from Montevideo, Uruguay, is a well-known name in the mail art world. His work spans throughout multiple disciplines, such as writing, painting, conceptual art, graphic design and typography, political, social and cultural commentary, performance, group art action, film/video, curating… He has participated in hundreds of mail art exhibitions, with combinations of poetry, performances and video art.
Clemente sent us a postcard with printed intertwining words PAN/PAZ.
Eni Ilis is a Brazilian artist who is part of mail art networking since 2009. She presented her artwork at various exhibitions in Brazil and her mail art is part of many archives and collections around the world. She often uses a pencil as a tool to create gentle and soft drawings, but this time she sent us a collage with, in her own words, the ‘names of Brasilian writers that I read, read, I’ll read always’ (Clarice Lispector, Paulo Leminski, Orides Fontela, Hilda Hilst, Nélida Piñon…).
Tofu is an American artist who lives and works in San Francisco who also organises projects and exhibitions. His mixed media collages (altered postcards, rubber stamps, colour swatches, map art…) and acrylic landscapes are strongly inspired by travelling, geography, history and local points of interest. For more about Tofu’s art please visit his website.
Tofu sent us a painted postcard inspired by Willa Cather’s 1927 novel “Death Comes for the Archbishop”. He explained, “When I open my favourite book Willa Cather’s ‘Death Comes for the Archbishop’, the New Mexico sky can suddenly appear before me.”
“Elsewhere the sky is the roof of the world; but here the earth was the floor of the sky. The landscape one longed for when one was far away, the thing all about one, the world one actually lived in, was the sky, the sky!”
― Death Comes for the Archbishop
Steven Renald is an artist from Quebec, Canada. He sent us his mixed media envelope. More of Steven’s art you can find on his FB gallery.
Angela Caporaso is an artist from Caserta in southern Italy who is focusing on mail art, artists books and visual poetry, working with the mediums of collage, trash-art and, more recently, digital formats. She exhibits her artwork since the 1980s and her creativity engages in various media and styles, and also includes typography and literature. Some of her previous exhibitions were dedicated to Albert Camus, Emily Dickinson, Pier Vittorio Tondelli. Visit her website for more information.
Angela sent us a postcard inspired by classical Greek epic poem “Odyssey”, the expressive painting of the part of his fleet on a dazzling Mediterranean sun.
Judith Skolnick from Washington DC, USA, has been mail artist since 1990s and she was part of numerous projects and exhibitions. She sent us a postcard inspired by Christopher Brown’s photography book “Path of Beauty”.
Droitwich Mail Art 