hans ruedi fricker - mail art

Growing up on the country side in Switzerland, I have always admired Hans Ruedi Fricker, a local "Mail Art Artist". Here's an interview I just found online. I've always loved the idea of having a 'global art dialogue in form of letters'.

I love his stamp saying: 'NUR SENDER KANN MAN ORTEN'. Wich means: 'One can only locate a sender'.

Here's a blurb from wikipedia's definition of Mail Art:

Mail art is art which uses the postal system as a medium.
Mail art is also, simultaneously, a message that is sent, the medium through which it is sent as well as one of the longest-lasting art movements in history. To be precise, an amorphous international mail art network evolved of thousands of participants in over fifty countries between the 1950s and the 1990s from the work of Ray Johnson and influenced by earlier groups, including Dada, the Surrealists and Johnson's contemporaries in the Fluxus group. Mail artists characteristically exchange ephemera in the form of illustrated letters, zines, rubberstamped, decorated or illustrated envelopes, artist trading cards, postcards, 'artistamps', mail-interviews and three-dimensional objects..... read all

While I was looking for some of his examples I came accross this wonderful MailArtBLog

Here's what some of Hans Ruedi Fricker's mail art pieces look like:

Intruiged? Fricker has a book called "I am a networker (sometimes) , you can order it here.

Comments

[Mosaics]

i already got a copy of his book and it's fantastic~!

[Patricia Muñoz]

International project Mail Art

I will be realized some contest of mail art eventually by a different topic in each one but related between. After I will be realized a virtual exhibition in www.patriciamunoz.com; with the set of works an artist's book and a work I will be realized. When I arranges of sufficient material an itinerant exhibition will be realized in galleries of Barcelona and in the cities of the participants. In the exhibition the works will appear of mail art received, the artist's books and works realized.

I International Contest of Mail Art - " Self-portrait vs Interiorization "
Patricia Muñoz invites to take part in the I International Contest of Mail Art with the topic "Self-portrait vs interiorización" to realize later a virtual exhibition in the same web with all the received works and a project of interchange.

The contest is open and flexible to all the artistic expressions: painting, drawing, narrative, visual poetry, poetry, engraving, photography, collage .. etc and styles.

Topic: "Self-portrait vs interiorization"
Deadline: On June 30, 2007
Number of works: there is no limit of works.
Address: Patricia Muñoz. Apartado de Correos n º 146. 08200 Sabadell. Barcelona. Catalonia. Spain
Measured: Postal or Free
Sending: Without envelope!
The works will not be returned
Documentation will be sent to all the participants
Information to attaching in the work: Name of artist, Address, Age and Mail

Finality: Mail Art assembles to the major quantity of works of Mail Art concerning around the presented topic, the Self-portrait vs Interiorization. I will realize a project on the above mentioned topic, realizing an artist's book where I will gather all the received works and a work to major format. Later I will forward my works of mail art to the participants, creating this way an interchange. Finally there will be realized a virtual exhibition, showing each of the received and sent works, the artist's book and the final project.

Patricia Muñoz
[email protected]