Mail Art: Droplets Gather

This was an intriguing format of not only sharing art, but also creating art.  For my own personal account, I had never heard of mail art till watching the short documentary "How to Draw A Bunny" that examined the peculiar life of Ray Johnson and his originations to mail art.  Throughout the film, I thought it was humorous how he would send art to his close friends, but also created a puzzle with a hidden dialogue that only he seemed to understand.  Therefore, through inspiration on this particular idea, my mail art was to create a "story" that involved all participants.  The art-form of this particular story that I created was influenced by Japanese comic-style, manga.  Manga has been a huge part of my life and was one of the main reasons why I became so passionate about the art world.  The purpose of using manga was due to my sense of nostalgia and straight-forward story-telling.  The reason why manga was a "straight-forward" way of dialogue was because in each of the participant's mail, there would be a short page of a manga, and only when brought together as a whole can we all understand the meaning of the story.  Through this, I wanted to create a personal relationship as well as group bond in my art.

Now to describe a little bit more on the story, the main character is seen to be looking outside of the window and completely dissociated from her work environment.  As the story progresses in the next few panels, we see her going outside with an umbrella in hand.  As she walks in the rain, she stops to look at her reflection in a puddle, until eventually crying in defeat as if she exposed herself to some truth that she had hidden away.  In the last panel, we see her completely slumped to the ground in the midst of a raining city, however, there is no rain that is pouring on top of her.  The ending is to be determined by the audience members, "did someone help the defenseless girl by covering her from the rain with their umbrella?", "does the rain not falling on her symbolize how she is completely dissociated from herself and everyone around her?", or "maybe she is the only one who can protect herself from the harsh conditions of her environment?".  I want to create a final puzzle for the participant and to intrigue them to probe further, maybe even asking the original creator what the meaning behind the manga is.

Therefore in conclusion, I wanted to create a story dialogue that demonstrates separateness and integration.  This can be seen by the very format of the mail art as I send each individual their own panel, but to understand the entire story, you need the collective effort of all participants.  Just like how raindrops are separated and fall individually, they come into conjunction with each other to create a large and whole puddle.

Only through// collective// realization, // will once // separated // raindrops// combine to // become a //united// puddle