Seth Nicemail – conceptual correspondence art
Mail art uses physical media to create intellectually, visually, or artistically sophisticated communication, typically between two individuals. This is a fantastic concept – art has always connected people. Using the infrastructure of the postal system for this purpose is both logical and comprehensible.
For many years (since 2009), I have been actively engaged in artistic verbal communication on social media. I apply this one-to-many approach in a modified way to the physical world through mail art.
In conceptual correspondence art, the recipients may be unaware of each other, yet they are interconnected through the underlying artistic concept. They become part of the artwork, even without knowledge of the concept itself.
While each recipient of a piece may choose to appreciate it, ignore it, or discard it, a project is truly complete when – though this remains hypothetical – all recipients, including the artist, come together to reveal the bigger picture as a community.
Mail art projects
#6 Zoo of three centuries
I paint 15 postcards with watercolor. For each card, I cut out two animals of the same species from 19th- and 20th-century books. A third animal image I generate using AI.
#5 Mail art irritates people
I create 49 sentences with the subject ‘mail art’, the predicates ‘irritates’, ‘inspires’, ‘offends’, ’empowers’, ‘comforts’, ‘annoys’, ‘connects’, and the objects ‘people’, ‘strangers’, ‘nobody’, ‘authorities’, ‘friends’, ‘society’, ‘demons’.
#4 From my point of view
I paint a rectangle on eleven postcards, sending them to locations along a straight line that extends farther and farther from my studio.
#3 Guernica admission ticket
I print a black-and-white photo of an admission ticket on six postcards and cut the original ticket into six strips.
#2 The postbox I’m sent from
I take a photo of the postbox from which the postcards of this project will be sent and print it on those postcards.
Incoming mail art
Lutz Anders
Berlin based typographer and mail artist Lutz Anders sent one of his beautiful linocuts, this one titled "Berlin-Neukölln, Körnerpark" in response to Zoo of three centuries in a self-crafted envelope. The back of the envelope is stamped "Postkunst # 2088 / MAI 2025".
Stephan J. Mitterwieser
Another great postcard (size 12 x 21 cm) from German mail artist Stephan J. Mitterwieser with an original stamp, created during the Clara Mosch workshop on 20250308 at Kunstsammlungen Chemnitz.
Ryosuke Cohen
A marvelous sheet (42 x 30 cm), sent by the famous mail artist Ryosuke Cohen from Japan. He is well known for his mail art project Brain Cell, which he began in 1985. Ryosuke continues to connect mail artists from all over the world to this day.
george
george sent a Polaroid (numbered 1/2 on the back) in response to Mail art irritates people. His photograph features postcard 12/49 of my project. He decorated the frame of the Polaroid with hundreds of tiny cuts and mounted it on cardboard. Additionally, he attached a...
Stephan J. Mitterwieser
"Mail art is no fast art": German mail artist Stephan J. Mitterwieser created this impressive postcard (size 21 x 12 cm), with stamps, paint and stitching.
Simon Cutts
This great postcard (numbered 10/500 on the back) is blind embossed, titled "The Postcard Is Always Innocent" and dedicated to Jeremy Cooper. I received it from Simon Cutts and Erica Van Horn, Coracle, in Ireland as a response to Mail art irritates people. Erica and...
Rittiner & Gomez
Beautiful yellow and blue water color on paper by Swiss illustrator and painter Rittiner & Gomez. In response to Mail art irritates people.