Amazing Mail Art

Well, summer is over and I've been back in school for some time. 
I have an amazing student teacher and am having a great start to the school year. This has fortunately left me with lots of mental space to keep up with my art!
I had a busy summer that went way too fast but I managed to have a wonderfully creative time with some different Mail Art groups throughout the few months break. The challenges and Mail Art swaps really ignited my artistic fires. I am addicted.

I have been asked by my county art supervisor to lead our Artist Educator Team building project this year.  Guess what I want to do? You guessed it! Mail Art!

 Each year the art teachers in my county do some sort of Team building activity for professional development. As our profession is art, we do some sort of collaborative art project. In the past there have been collaborative art groups, last year an altered book swap, and this year I was asked to lead the project. All of them are optional, but I love participating. 

This year our county launched new core values, one of which is Relationships. So based on this core concept I am proposing a Mail Art Swap, to build our relationships with our peers. 

My county is large, and as art teachers there is only one, if not only a few teachers in your subject at each school. It is very isolating. We get together as a county, and we hold conferences, but with the advent of social media, art teachers are getting less and less engaged with one another. Many teachers have retired, many new teachers have been hired and we are now in a situation where we no longer have connections to one another within our county. So mail art is my proposal as a vehicle to get to know one another again, with a monthly swap through out the year, as well as some swaps through a Facebook group.

I will present my workshop with part lecture, part demonstration, and part hands on activity, and it will be presented to 4 groups of teachers - so I do it 4 times. I have been completely obsessed with it. I cannot stop making samples and thinking about it. I have presented at conferences many times over, but people pick to come to your conference workshop. These guys have to come to my presentation! Pressure. I want to make it fun!

I wanted to bring samples from other mail artists, so I reached out to see if anyone would be willing to send me any inspirational mail art. I thought it would be awesome if I had happy mail to open at the workshop!  I have been collecting samples, the items I have been sent and examples I have made myself already, so I had some examples, but like I said, I want it to be awesome. I need lots of awesome examples! 

Well let me tell you, these mail art folks rock and they have answered the call!  People have sent me the most inspirational and diverse happy mail envies, ATCs, twinchies, rolos, postcards.... It's been incredible! Once I open the stash Monday I will share. I have so much mail to reciprocate! It's just awesome.

Look at this!

These workshops go down at our annual staff development meeting Oct 13th at the Virginia Museum if Fine Arts. I'm so excited!! I can't wait to show off all that I have been working on and all the goodies my new friends have sent.

What would you like to see in a mail art workshop? 

I have made loads of resources to share, so do let me know if you would like a link for my presentation and handouts.