United Eternal Network

There is joy, honesty, facts, aesthetics and collaboration in a Sticker Dude mailing. Mail art is, after all, an exchange. Sometimes Sticker Dude sends me work for the archives and I am always so grateful. He culls work that tells a story, or that enhances his story and I feel as if I am getting the cream at the top of the bottle of milk in Mail art. Look at the stamps on the envelope. Beauty, chemistry, a polymath, commentary 'out of bounds' and stickers produced by Joel but conceived by others.  In this mailing: William Mellott, Sebela Bana and Adam Roussopoulos. What more could you want?

William Mellott/art direction Sticker Dude

Sebela Bana /art direction Sticker Dude and Adam Roussopoulos

Design William Mellott and Sticker Dude

Sticker Dude & Adam Roussopoulos

This is actually hot pink.

True story from Carol Stetser 1991

Images documenting Carol's relationship to the mail art network.

Save Mailart, Save the World

Thanks Joel, if this doesn't get me making mail art, nothing will!

 

The question of Dada

So much of what the Sticker Dude does is collaborative.  Although he might use a collaborative piece or two on his envelopes, they are something I imagine is a singular act. Sticker Dude's envelopes are a mixture of protest and belonging. You might find heroes and demons sitting side by side on a Sticker Dude envie.

This mailing is about Ed. I received mail from Ed (for mail art exhibitions I have hosted), but we don't trade regularly. My circle seems to get smaller and smaller as other things usurp my time, so it's good to hold a few of his pieces in my keen hands.

Our norms are shifting in these pandemic years.  Gone are the days of the simple pleasures like a martini or a cafe visit. Do Dadaists drink martinis?

Usually Sticker Dude tells me that a mailing is for the archives.  This surreal, dystopian add-and-pass is definately a keeper, so I wll assume I should. It feels like a snapshot of this moment in time.

I found the cheese. 

I wonder what Dada would do with Trumpism?  Could we be anymore shocked? Would Dada disrupt the heirarchy?

 

Honesty implies an Audience.

As we fill our envelopes, make our artistamps, select our postage stamps, imagine the opening and the response, we are performing for our audience. And, according to the sticker dude clipping service and Sarah Viren, (below) in particular, we are being responsible creative non-fiction writers, of a sort.

Sticker dude has enclosed a host of prompts for the mail art world to select from, re-use, afix, delight in; and in this mailing he also offers opportunities forus to gather material that may help me/us to tell our stories. Look at those artistamps, those stickers - the collaborative imagery we can make!

When I used to go into schools to work with little kids, making books, one of my favourite activites was making envelopes and letting them make and choose images that they could use to tell their own stories.  They would pick images out, arrange them and create a narrative. Joel is sending us that kind of valuable stuff so we can tell bigger, bolder stories and learn from him through the stories he tells.

Great mailing!  It is a tough old world that we co-exist in, but luckily Joel is one of my correspondents! Contact him, get some stamps and stickers and be empowered to create, protest and change things!

A3 collage by Carol Stetser with images from the Eternal Network, reproduced by the Ssticker Dude, 2021

stamps: Cracker jack Kid, Piermaro Ciani and the Sticker Dude

 

I'm a cheerleader for the Sticker Dude

The Sticker Dude has a plan.  You can construe it by looking carefully at the stamps he chooses. He is a postal Greek God, an international postal force, a conservation-loving, Black Lives Matter, Olympic enthusiast, American football supporter, hopeful hospital believer and rings the liberty bell far and wide. 

He continues to add to my archive of mail art, assuring my place in Suffolk mail art history forever. Thank you Joel! Lots of great stuff here.  Look carefully.