Mail Art

As I was looking for ideas on how to flesh out and fully realize my final project for this class, I came across this image. I was looking through images of Vietnamese art and saw this tea bag that was painted on. The style, the use of the tea bag, and the watercolor were a combination/aesthetic I wanted to try out.

I also started finding images of people making their own tea blends. I went back and forth for a few days on whether or not I would actually do this. I'm personally a BIG tea person, so I have a lot of loose leaf tea but also tea already in bags. If I didn't give everyone custom tea the other option would be to just mail out different pre-packaged tea bags I already had. I didn't make up my mind until much later. But, throughout working on this project, this was on the back burner. My main concern was on if my classmates would take issue with me handling the tea as opposed to the tea being packaged and manufactured in a sterile factory environment.

When I watched the mail art presentation and learned about Ray Johnson, I liked how the art was displayed on the outside of the envelope. This was my first time seeing this type of art. So I echoed his use of red ink for the names and addresses and also drew on the envelope. I wanted to stay within the tea/traditional Japanese theme so I decided to stick with watercolor/ink type of wet medium.


I started looking through Japan's Edo period and found landscapes from Utagawa Kunisada. I tried to emulate this style but with tea farms. I painted the initial landscape with a lighter color then went back to add layers to the foreground. Also, the envelope I used wasn't white but more of a creme. This replicates the color of the paper used in the landscape painting.  I looked for actual photos of tea farms for reference. Normally I would go back in with black ink to add detail to a drawing but I wasn't sure if the addresses would be legible.

For the rest of the envelope, I tried to imitate what some packages in Japan look like or kind of give the impression that whatever is inside is an import. So I used red ink to write in Japanese characters from top to bottom. I ended up sending a mix of loose leaf and prepackaged tea to everyone. In an effort to save some time, I dumped out lower quality tea from the tea bag and refilled them with some loose leaf I had. I wrapped each teabag with string and wrote what kind of tea they received in Japanese. Each letter was then sealed with red wax. I found this website on some historical postage. I considered doing something like a Japanese stamp but wasn't sure if the post office would view is as fraudulent? But it did provide good examples of how to decorate and style the other side of the envelope.  

Tea

Ray Johnson 

Utagawa Kunisada 

Japanese Imports 

http://manchukuostamps.com/1934covers.htm