I’m taking a collage class at UC Berkeley Extension with papermaker, printmaker, book and installation artist Michelle Wilson. We’re about 6 weeks into the class and have explored various techniques and media for creating collages with found imagery.
One of my favorite assignments in the class so far was to create a piece of mail art inspired by fluxus artists, such as Ray Johnson, who included mail art in their work during the 1960’s and 70’s.
For my project I decided to continue with ideas from the previous week where we used chance to determine which images to use or where to place them in the collage. I thought it would be fun to send one to anyone in the class that wanted one.
I started by collecting interesting postcards that I found at various art locations, like the art store or the reception desk at art galleries. The postcards were of various sizes, so I cut them all down to 4″x6″ to make them all the same size and to keep postage to 34 cents each.
I painted both sides 12 cards by applying gesso with a bryer to both sides of the postcards. After letting them dry, I selected images that were either in my leftover pile from previous collages done in class or from junk mail received that week. I cut them to size and randomly adhered one to each card. After all 12 had one image, I added another and continued until I felt like they were done. I did this on both sides of the cards and decided which side was the front and which was the back.
On each postcard front, I added some black fluid acrylic, applied with the brayer. On the postcard backs, I gessoed these to give myself a textured, white writing surface for the address, stamp, and written message.
I’ll be mailing these out in the next day or two. It’ll be interesting to see what condition they’re in after working their way through the mail. 
Postcard back
Priscilla Read - Art Journey 
These are wonderful. If you have one left over you may send one to me! I’ll send you one back.
I’ll send you an email to get your address and we can exchange postcards. Thanks!
Priscilla! Love these!! And what an interesting process. Rather builds on so many other projects that I know you’ve done. Brava! I’ll happily trade with you if you have one leftover.
Hi Franki – Yes – I’ve been interested in collage and mail art for awhile, so this was a great project for me. You’re in luck, I still have a few left. I’ll mail you one this afternoon.
Woo Hoo! I’ll let you know when it lands here. Thanks.