Filmmaker screens film, leads ‘mail art’ workshop at Center on Main

FALLS VILLAGE – Filmmaker Imogen Pranger introduced Falls Village residents to the world of mail art during a presentation and hands-on workshop at the Center on Main Thursday, July 2. She screened her 16-minute film, “Mail Myself to You,” before leading the workshop, which was attended by about a dozen adults and children.

“Mail art” has been around for decades, but defining it is a little tricky, Pranger said before doing her best to describe the medium.

“It’s a system of shared art works using the postal system,” she explained. No two pieces of mail art look the same, which makes defining it difficult. It can appear as decorated postcards, envelopes and small pieces of cardstock. The postal markings and stamps are considered part of the art.

Pranger, who graduated with a film degree from Oberlin College in 2024, said she was introduced to mail art as a freshman while working at the Clarence Ward Art Library at the college.

As a student employee, Pranger said then-librarian Barbara Prior asked her to create an organizational system for the library’s donated mail art collection, primarily works by artists Reid Wood and Harley Francis.

Both artists had donated or sold their collections to the library, which included thousands of individual pieces, each small enough to to be sent through the mail.

Patrick L. Sullivan

There is no typical piece of mail art. The pieces must be small and flat enough to go through the postal system, and there must be room for stamps. The only real commonality is the highly idiosyncratic and individualized nature of the pieces.

Pranger said mail art emerged in the 1960s and had its heyday in the 1980s. The rise of the internet in the 1990s saw a decrease as artists shifted to digital formats that could be shared with a single mouse click.

But mail art has rebounded in recent years. Pranger said it’s part of a more general interest among visual artists in using older technology, such as film cameras, typewriters and mimeograph machines.

The fun of mail art, she said, is joining “an international network of mail art. If you send stuff out, you’ll get stuff back.”

Pranger said she developed a friendship with the mail carrier whose route covered her home in Oberlin.

“He’d say ‘What is this crazy stuff you keep getting?’ and I explained it.”

“Mail Myself to You” is available for viewing at the David M. Hunt Library as part of the video collection overseen by Falls Village filmmaker Yonah Sadeh, who met Pranger in film school in Prague.