It can be a collage, a finely etched postage stamp, computer graphics, a drawing, a xerox, a color copy, a print or a rubber stamp. To get into the Mail Art network, one can find listings of exhibitions, and call for entries in mail art magazines and newsletters, as well as popular mainstream mail art periodicals. Simply write for details of the show, submit works to be shown in the exhibit, and at the closing of the show receive documentation of all participating Artists names and addresses. You are then in the Mail art network, the mail art stream of consciousness. Between the artists there is a belief in community, a global network of communication exchange.
Mail art becomes art when anyone who sends or receive it in the mail decides to call it art.
When Alice Kitselman-Ames opens her mailbox, she never quite knows what she'll find. A plastic carp on a key chain. A wooden letter in a painted canvas envelope. Postcards covered with delicate drawings. It's all part of the international, collaborative art-exchange known as mail art.