Growing Up In The Post or Raised By Mailartists. Mark Pawson.
New Observations (USA) issue 126, Summer 2000

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I discovered mailart in 1980, aged 17, living at home in a small English town, in a
good old fashioned leftie bookshop in Manchester, I found a copy of LPG, a cassette
magazine, which had a large foldout cover detailing other publications and projects.
An intricately collaged advert for Ben Allen's Cabaret zine caught my eye, so I sent
off to Northern Ireland for a copy. As soon as I recieved a copy I wrote off to one
person from each country mentioned, sending them a package of my hand made
rubberstamped and spray-painted stickers, postcards and trapezoidal envelopes.

Of course I didn't realise at the time that I'd plugged directly into the Mailart
Network at the peak of early 1980's activity, my first contacts were a who's who
of the most active mailart proponents of the time. I soon got immersed, waiting for
the post everyday before going to school, putting together an assembling publication
directly imitating Vittore Baroni's Arte Postale! And somehow managed to become
the only kid at my school with permission to use the photocopier.

At 13 I'd been a bit too young to get involved in Punk and New Wave, and never
had enough money to buy the records. I was more interested in the emerging wave
of fanzines and small publications, especially the more offbeat collage/comics
/graphics based ones, and was regularly sending off postal orders around the country.
At the same time I was writing to skateboard manufacturers in America, who obliged
by sending back stylish product sheets and most importantly free stickers!

In this way I'd already discovered a method and established my own network for
directly obtaining publications and information unavailable elsewhere. Finding myself
part of the Mailart network made sense to me as a logical development of this and in
addition was a much more personal, continuing two-way communication process.

For me the International Postal Art Network was an unparalleled learning and
exploring experience. A way of finding out what artists around the world were doing,
a tremendously energetic, self-created forum for equal exchange of work and ideas,
which had the advantage of being inclusive and self-reinforcing, together with the
cachet of being near-incomprehensible to non-participants! Communication and
Participation are obvious components of Mailart, but Play is just as important, the
playful, fun element of Mailart is vital, and needs to be acknowledged as a goal in
itself.

Whilst I'm a semi-retired International Postal Art Superstar these days, I still feel
part of the network, and know that it will always be there as a tool or resource when
needed. The methods of working, exchange, sharing ides that I learnt via Mailart still
inform the way I choose to work today; producing and distributing editions of
intelligible, affordable bookworks. I party make my living from selling direct by
mailorder my own publications, and those of other artists, what I learned directly
from mailart has given me the freedom and confidence to do this...