Snail Mail Sweethearts

A roundup of five postcards, described more below. L to R: a woman smoking, eyes in an envelope, an erasure poem valentine, eyes in an envelope, a person buying oranges

For three years I ran Snail Mail Sweethearts, a visual art subscription service, microfiction archive, and newsletter about history’s finest snail mail, featuring

  • annual, quarterly, or monthly original artwork mailed to subscribers

  • deep dives on juicy mail throughout history

  • monthly postcard-length fiction

It was a passion project I was honored to see through for so long, and I cite it as the thing that spurred some of my greatest growth as an artist and author. To read the backlogs of my original drafts of flash fiction, follow the links below.

Paid subscribers got palm-sized works of art, and no two were alike. Soft-sculpture embroidery, erasure poetry, drawings, watercolors, and paintings were all crafted with love for patrons over those 3.5 years:

 
A watercolor and ink drawing of a quiet street in Toulouse, France. It is painted onto a French romance novel page. One of the buildings is covered in vines.
An oil pastel specter-giant curiously knocks at the door of a cabin drawn in pen and ink in a forest at night. The forest is made of black paper, oil pastel, and paint. There is a golden moon in one corner.
a 2D soft sculpture of an astronaut. It is sewn from shiny silver fabric directly onto gold mat board. There are yellow embroidered stars above them.
A single-line drawing of a person at the market buying oranges. Some oranges and the smiley face on their plastic bag are painted orange. Their head has been replaced by a vintage stamp from Japan.
Mona Lisa style eyes painted in watercolor gaze out of a business mail envelope. Above the eyes reads "to be opened by addressee only."
An erasure poem on a heart-shaped valentine cut from a Soviet film poster. The poem reads: "a terrible thing / can you imagine / ? / 'We are not going to / hide' / no longer,"

It was a privilege! Thank you for being a part of it.

A vintage postcard of a house in a field has been collaged over. A stylized sun is in the top left, an eyeball is in the middle, and a yellow door is on the bottom right. They are all connected with a zigzag of yellow embroidery.
An erasure poem with a man cut from a children's bible; his eyes are crossed out. The poem reads, "I sin and am worthy / I deserve to be one of you."
A watercolered set of eyes in blue eyeshadow gazes out from the plastic window of a business envelope. In the panel above, where a return address ought to go, is the tyepwritten sentence, "2011 was the year we first made contact."
A single-line drawing of a naked woman smoking by herself and looking in the vanity mirror. Her cocktail and a plastic bag are painted orange. the words "a smoke with a friend" are written on the bottom right.