Mail Art with the Portland Correspondence Club

Last March I joined the first year of the Portland Correspondence Club (PDXCC). It was started in January of 2015 by two mail artists and it's held at the IPRC in Portland.

I met Niko, one of the founders, at the Portland Zine Symposium the summer before and he somehow knew I would love mail art, even though I had never done it before and I didn't think I was that into it. Niko invited me to join and finally after missing the first three months I went to a meeting and found my people and a fun new hobby.

Mail Art people are into mail, envelopes, office supplies, stationary, stamps, stamp pads, typewriters, history, snail mail, writing letters. They're the kind of people who squeal with excitement over a box filled with vintage penny stamps and who hoot and applaud a mailman when he's introduced to the group.

Mail Art people understand when I swoon over a certain washi tape or a get a little obsessed with fountain pens. They get me.

A banner I made and sent to each member for a Meet Make Mail themed project

The club meets once a month and each meeting usually includes a few to several vintage typewriters you can use, often there is a skill share or project, but mainly we visit and exchange our faux postage made for that month. Each member gets a passport book and people who make stamps each month put them in your book and often cancel them. It's damn official and fun to see what everyone makes.

Every month members can choose to be a part of the monthly mail art exchange based on a theme.
Here are a few I did in 2015

This was my first project. The theme was food and this was a study on the different menus on The Titanic. It folds and I sealed the sides before sending.

Postcards of a Tea House with images from old photos. The other side has a fake stamp and Tea themed address. This theme was collage 

October's Mail Art Project

Here are a few of the mail art projects that I received from other members.

Everyone likes getting fun things in the mail. If this interests you, there might be a correspondence club near you. I know there is one in San Francisco and Olympia, Wa. 

a great find on the coast

While I was at the coast a couple weeks ago I got to visit a place recommended by my beach house roomies, a recycle center called Cart'm.

Cart'm is like Scrap in Portland, if you are familiar with it. It is a place to recycle all kinds of things and they have a resale store with some great stuff in it.


Outside is a little garden with neat outdoor art made from recycled products. It was fun to see all the neat stuff they had come up with.

A substantial stash of a vintage magazine were found in the store. The magazine is called Ideals. It is a strange magazine that was in print for 50 years. It was filled with all kinds of illustration art, mostly poetry and no ads. It was Christian and there are lots of Christian images and poems, but for example, the Easter issues still had lots of easter Bunny stuff, too. It used lots of reader contributions.


The illustrations are amazing. The colors are great, so saturated and rich and the styles are great, they remind me a lot of stuff I saw as a kid. They are awesome for collage. It is hard to cut into them, but I will, when I finally get the focus and space to do those collages I keep talking about.

Anyway, Ideals Magazine seem to be pretty available on Ebay. The issues came out with themes. I got a bunch of Christmas ones that are great. Here are some images from the Easter ones.

More images on my flickr account.

I also got these awesome slide storage cases while I was there. I love the style of these. The compartments flip out to access the slides. I don't know if I ill actually use these for slides, but I might. I certainly have inherited enough of them.



So, yeah, check out Ideals magazines if you come across them and Cart'm when you are near Manzanita, Oregon. Good stuff.

the plant plant

I have been keeping up with the collage work at Scrapatorium for a short while now and I just love everything she does. Her collage is witty and has that kind of flow that is often missing in collage.

This image is one of my favorites and not just because it is beautiful and perfectly done, but also because when I see it I hear Jerri Blank from Strangers with Candy say "I wanna work at the artificial plant plant"

If you are a Strangers with Candy fanatic like I am, you are totally smiling right now. If not, I apologize.

I love this piece. See more of her work, here.