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Allison Anne is collecting artwork for a new project. There's just one rule: every submission has to arrive through the mail.

As AI makes it easier to generate art with a click, Anne is part of a small but growing community of artists choosing a slower way to connect: the U.S. mail. They're sending handmade art, one envelope at a time.

A new piece just arrived at Anne’s Minneapolis apartment from Germany, in a sturdy brown paper envelope with hand-carved beetle stamps. 

Inside the envelope are four pages of block prints, each numbered and signed. These prints may become part of Anne’s next zine. They may be sent back through the postal service to other artists.

Mail art took off in the 1960s, when artists including Ray Johnson turned the postal system into a creative network. Johnson often encouraged people to alter his work and send it back. 

“Things flourish, grow, wilt, die. A conversation will restart itself,” Johnson said 

 “Each person has a different reason to communicate.”

And in an age of AI chatbots, where so much communication happens through screens, that idea feels newly relevant.

It's at once a way to create community, and an intentional step away from slick, AI generated graphics in favor of something scrappier and more human. 

“It’s the pleasure of doing the work, and the joy of connecting with others and building something, and that's been transformative for me,” Anne says. “I really feel that mail art changed my life.” 

Anne is just about ready to mail out two brown paper envelopes of their own, covered in teal ink stamps. One is going to northern Minnesota, the other to New York. 

Sometimes those envelopes contain paper collages. Other times, handmade pamphlets, called zines.

Anne has connected with artists all over the world through mail art. Importantly, there are no gatekeepers.

Mail art is about “looking at who gets a seat at the table and how do you expand the table and bring people in,” Anne said.

“Anything can be a zine. And you can start anywhere. You can start today.” Anne says mail art can be any art that you create and send to someone else.

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Gretchen Brown

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As AI makes it easier to generate art with a click, a small but growing community of artists choosing a slower way to connect: the U.S. mail. 

In age of AI, 'mail art' has special meaning for some Minnesota artists

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