Existing comment:
Russell Butler, aka BuZ blurr (b. 1943, American)
Sheet of artistamps, 1986
This sheet of artistamps by Arkansas-based artist Russell Butler, or BuZ blurr, can be broken apart to create many individual works, including ten woodcut-style caricatures of artists prominent in the mail art scene, among them John Held Jr. The work documents a Dallas gathering in support of the international Decentralized Mail Art Congress, a four-month project in which participants all over the world would document the convening of "two or more mail artists" and send the evidence to the congress's headquarters in Geneva. As such, this work represents a network and becomes a means of forging that network. The word "decentralized" also demonstrates another aspect of mail art, which is to have a decentralized movement that follows a rhizomatic idea of no leader or central location. In many ways this work is a visual representation of the values of mail art.
-- Whitney Hill |