Kirjahaku

Although increasingly appreciated in fine art and stamp collecting circles, artist postage stamps, or artistamps, are more likely to be traded between the people who create them than they are to be exhibited in commercial art galleries or read about in philatelic journals. Artistamps are part and parcel of the grassroots network known as Mail Art, an alternative art of creative long-distance communication that intuited the demand for cross-cultural exchange long before the Internet. Although seemingly rigid, the postage stamp format allows flexible approaches in painting, watercolor, offset, photography, photocopy, rubber-stamping, engraving, digitization and sculpture.

Collaging Information:The Artist, the Librarian, the Artist/LibrarianSeveral years after becoming a professional librarian in 1972, I became involved in Mail Art. This international network of cooperating artists has expanded my vision of both the world and the profession. Over the years, I have taken it upon myself to document various aspects of Mail Art, which would have remained unexamined without the involvement of someone both actively participating in the medium and in possession of professional research skills. In so doing, I have been able to integrate two important facets of my life.