IA Unveils 2025 Mail Art Project: Textures of Ecology
IA is pleased to share the artistic contributions created by participants from IA member institutions for the 2025 Mail Art Project (MAP). Inspired by the IA happening Textures of Ecology, this iteration of the participatory art project invited participants to draw grounding and inspiration from the natural world in their creative art-making practices.
In times of overwhelm, a simple way to bring awareness back to the here and now is to use the senses (sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch) as a way to reconnect with the corporeal body. MAP 2025 asked participants to consider how the natural treasures that exist in the margins of local neighborhood trails and parks could become the center of attention, intention, and creative process.
Participants were encouraged reflect on the following questions as they headed out to forage for materials for their project:
• How can we use natural and found materials to connect with and make visible, in new ways, the relations between place, land, and embodiment?
• How do our bodies extend beyond their skin? How does place become part of our touching, feeling self?
The submissions are a reminder of the power of place in fostering creativity, and the playful abundance that is always already open to us through nature and its material bounty. We are especially inspired by the following pieces where the visual poetry of the artists’ composition is supplemented with verse:
You can explore all submissions from this year (and the archive from previous years) on our Mail Art Project website.
ABOUT THE MAIL ART PROJECT
The Mail Art Project is an annual creative activity free to IA members, inspired by the IA National Gathering theme. Mail art, or correspondence art, traditionally has been a way for individuals to create and send small-scale works of art through the postal service. A variety of media can be used in mail art, including: paper, postcards, found or recycled images and objects, stamps, paint, photographs, music, poetry, or anything else that can be put in an envelope and sent via post.
