We had a great turn out last night for the opening of Presents: Three Months of Mail Art for Hyperallergic HQ. Over a hundred people came through during the opening night of Northside Open Studios to take a look at the 120+ submissions from around the world.

A fun time was had by all and we’ve already sold half of our zine edition in one night! But don’t worry, there are still some copies available for purchase online or when you stop by … but remember, they HAVE TO be mailed to you.

As we prepared for the opening later that night, a group of Hyperallergic summer interns, Alexander Cavaluzzo, Jocelyn Silver and Ayanno Elsom, help co-curator Kate Wadkins put the limited edition Presents zine catalogue together.

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The final catalogue zine. Available for purchase here.

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Some visitors playing William Everston’s Tic Tac Toe mail art work.

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A visitor leafing through the mail art works in the sitting area.

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Hyperallergic publisher, Veken Gueyikian, giving a little tour of the mail art works to L Magazine‘s Benjamin Sutton and local Williamsburger Vana Khanjian.

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Bloggers and arts writers congregate early on during the party, including (left to right) Ben of C-monster, Carolina Miranda (the C-monster herself), and Rhizome’s senior editor, Joanne McNeil.

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Social mediaite Topher Ziobro, Todd Florio of the Brooklyn Historical Society, and artist Celso hanging out near Cristina Maldonado’s video mail art works.

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Visitors looking at our wall-o-art that was roughly subdivided into sections that featured collage, conceptual and handpainted works.

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A view of the room from the big mail art wall with a nice view of Laura Isaac’s beautiful Tibetan prayer banner-like hand painted envelopes hanging overhead.

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A view of the crowd of mail art fans.

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Artists & bloggers Stephanie Land and Jelsen Innocent speaking at Alexis at the party.

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Many of the guests spent a lot of time going through all the mail art we organized in archival boxes.

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Another view of the party goers with some artists in the mix, including Don Voisine and Bernard Klevickas (center), William Powhida (back left) and Nate Hill (back center).

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Perusing the central mail art table.

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Art Fag City’s Will Brand perusing our zine/tshirt table.

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It was a hands-on exhibition.

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Co-curator Kate Wadkins with Jason Roy of Pen15 Press and some young mail art fans.

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A close-up of Bernard Klevickas’s project for the opening night of Presents. The specially-ordered fortune cookies arrived by mail to the office filled with a timely message.

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A view of works by V.L. Fuller (top left), Jamie Burmeister (bottom left), Laura Cohen (center) and Bernard Klevickas (left).

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A view of works by J.D. Hastings (bottom center) and a “box full of surprises” from East Tennessee State University.

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A view of many of the collage-based works on the central mail art wall, including (clockwise from bottom left) works by Jennifer Pei Huang, Kate Rhoades, Austin Thomas, Brian Wolf, KURV, Mary Rork-Watson and Timm Mettler.

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Many of the hand-painted mail art works, including pieces by (clockwise spiral from bottom left) Don Voisine, Maritza Ruiz-Kim (four postcards visible), Theo Nelson, Peter Brock, Shana Goetsch, LaVona Sherarts, Harry Swartz-Turfle, Brian Dupont, Guido Vermeulen and Jonathan Bohm (striped envelope). And fragment of the scroll by Kate Rhoades on right.

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A view of Brian Piana’s digitized Hyperallergic Hs, which we displayed in a bowl during the show.

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The Presents: Three Months of Mail Art for Hyprallergic HQ exhibition continues at Hyperallergic HQ (181 N 11th Street, Suite 302, Williamsburg, Brooklyn) until Wednesday, June 29.

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Hrag Vartanian

Hrag Vartanian is editor-in-chief and co-founder of Hyperallergic. You can follow him at @hragv.

9 replies on “And the Envelope Please… “Presents” Mail Art Opening”

  1. looks so cool, some very creative work. And all I sent was a drawing on hotel stationery sent to you in a hotel stationery envelope, which was after all, “mail art” but still…  

    Love the fortune cookies and Bernard’s drawing is totally great!!

  2. For myself and all the other artists in the exhibit who couldn’t attend the opening, I’d like to thank Hyperallergic for the many photos.  Almost as good as being there!  Thanks!

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