My name is Clare, Im a printmaker from western NY currently residing in the Bay Area as I work on my MFA...

For the last few months I have been screen-printing hand cut envelopes and packing them with hand printed stickers using designs found in common mail: utility bills, parking tickets, credit card mailings ect... as well as lottery tickets and instructional diagrams from a variety of sources, the idea behind "Junk Mail" is that I realized that I was spending hours every week sifting through this so called "important" mail much of which just gets thrown away or recycled immediately. My intention is to bring attention to the messages we receive through the mail, how they are scrutinized, and how they serve to promote a culture of consumerism and debt, with little hope outside of a lotto jackpot winning.

My guidelines for the project are that I use only reclaimed materials, so I have been getting paper from recycling centers, old libraries and craigslist, so the majority of materials are reused.

My vision for the project is to mail out these envelopes and encourage recipients to put up the stickers anywhere they want and to perhaps join the project by creating mail art that questions the idea of "junk mail" or "important" mail, questioning the process of selling addresses for advertising purposes, the waste of paper for these mass mailings ect...

With that said.

If you are interested in receiving a piece "Junk Mail" or you want to join the project and create a piece of mail yourself .
contact me at clareszyd@yahoo.com
to pass along an address

peace,
Clare