Mail Me Art 3

I was pleased to be asked to participate in Mail Art 3, along with another 199 invited artists and illustrators. Here is a scan of my piece just before it hit the postbox!

Mail Me Art is a British-based project, run by Darren Di Lieto, the founder and co-editor of the illustration news portal The Little Chimp Society.

Mail Me Art is a fun little project that was created by Darren Di Lieto of The Little Chimp Society in late 2006. He was looking for a way to connect on a real world level with all of the brilliant and talented illustrators who had become part of his community and network. Mail Art was the perfect way to accomplish this task. The Mail Me Art project has held exhibitions up and down the UK, and was published as very nice book by HOW Books. It has also been featured or mentioned by Digital Arts, Computer Arts, Design Week and The Telegraph over the years. Mail Me Art is still going strong to this day and there seems to be no stopping it!

Here are the instructions I recieved:

Buy, make or steal an ordinary C5 (162 × 229 mm) paper envelope.

Take an A5 piece of card or two pieces of A4 paper folded once and place them inside the envelope to make it a bit more sturdy. You can decorate, draw or write a message on the inside contents, but your mail art will not be opened by us.

Now add our address to the centre of the back of the envelope, with your name, email address and country in the bottom right-hand corner. In the bottom left-hand corner include the words 'open me' or 'empty', depending on whether you included anything in the envelope or not.

Your envelope is now prepared for you to start work on it. The front of the envelope is your canvas. Do not include our address or the words Mail Me Art in your artwork. The topic, theme or inspiration for your mail art is at your discretion; it can be about anything you want. The artwork does not need to convey a message unless you want it to.

Do your thing!

Scan it or take a photo of your work and email it to us. High resolution is preferred.

Take it to the post office, buy some stamps, stick them to the top-right of the back of the envelope (the side with the address). It can be first or second class post, but do not send it recorded or signed for. Also at this point it has no value and is just a very nice envelope and not a piece of Art. If you have to fill in a customs form, please put zero value. Do not wrap your mail art in another envelope and do not worry about any damage or scratches that may occur while the work is in transit. We want you to send it as-is. In the past, some work has been damaged, drawn on by the post office workers or not even made it to the destination, but this is a risk we hope you're willing to take. :)

Take a breath!

Now wait for us to email you to say it has arrived and add it to the website.

Come to or show your support for the exhibition(s)!

Get a nice copy of the Mail Me Art book sent to you in the post. :)

Prepare for Mail Me Art 4! We're planning this for 2015-2016.