Mail Art

When I first learned about the mail art project I was curious about why go through the process of physically sending the art in the mail when you could just hand the pieces to your classmates. However, I was excited to receive art from my talented peers and send out my own work. I wanted my pieces to be quality for them and unique. I was inspired by a previous mail art assignment where a student made each piece dedicated to a positive female role-model. I wanted to bring attention to people I admire that are mostly unknown, and a few others. Because I am very passionate about music and LGBT+ representation, I decided to make each piece dedicated to an artist that is a part of the LGBT+ community.  Additionally, most of the songs I chose have openly LGBT+ lyrics or music videos. For example, Kesha's music video for her cover of I Need A Woman To Love, has her officiating a wedding of two woman and Pray It Away by Alex G is about going through coming to terms with your sexuality and religion. I made sure that everyone had a music video so it would be like everyone got an equal amount of art. I tried to cater who got what song by what I know of their music taste but I also felt confident in the quality and universal likability of each song that I left around half of them up to chance. I drew the pieces in my own 2D portrait style. 2D portraits have been something I have wanted to practice so this was the perfect opportunity for that. I wanted to put focus on the artists so I decided the pieces should have white backgrounds. I simply added the song title to the right and the artist's name beneath it. I spent a while on these pieces. When there wasn't the right marker color in the art classroom I would put the piece aside until I was able to get a more accurate color for the hair/skin/etc. I also redid one of the pieces so it would match the others when the lines became too thick when I tried covering up a mistake.

I understood the mail aspect of the project once I started receiving pieces in the mail. It was exciting having something to look forward to getting but also not getting all the pieces at the same time and not being sure when each piece would arrive.