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Midwest Mailers: The Sacred and Caring Art of Snail Mail

by frankie felegy

A pair of light-skinned hands drawing on a collage next to scattered art supplies on a colorful table.
Photo Credit: Janelle Ketcher
"Sending mail is something that's so rooted in the lived experience," Postal Service for the Dead's Janelle Ketcher says. "So kind of combining the living and the dead, the relationship in the now."

These artists are caring for physical mail—and the communities they’ve created to celebrate this communication.

For decades, artists have used mail as a way to share their work and connect with people far and wide. These dispatches play a part in supporting postal services, at a time when the United States Postal Service is at risk of running out of money. 

Here’s an intro to a financially accessible, widespread community of artists, grievers, and art-appreciators delivered straight (or gay) to your mailbox. 

A poster with an eight-pointed star and a colorful photograph next to a yellow envelope.
Photo Credit: Sunroom
Sunroom’s Monthly Flyer Club process, as described by Jacob Stolz: Explore different paper types. Incorporate paper cutouts, photographs, and mixed media. Design it digitally. Print out a big batch “and we’ll fold it into trifold and put it into a number 10 envelope with a stamp and send it off.”

Monthly Poster Delivery 

Out of a top-floor home studio in Chicago, Illinois, is Sunroom—the duo Clare Byrne and Jacob Stolz. The artists, along with their independent label and online archive, created a risograph print studio nearly five years ago. 

From there came the Monthly Flyer Club. What started as a push to connect to their friends and family during the pandemic—and support the USPS—has garnered thousands of “club members.” Each month, they create, print, stamp, and send an 8.5×11” flyer to their currently 2,000-strong subscriber circle for $5. Sometimes the art is word-based, other times double-sided on stock from French Paper (shoutout Michigan!) But they’re always handmade; they often combine Stolz’s film photos and Byrne’s designs. 

“We might never meet in person, but there is this kind of string that connects everybody,” Stolz says. “They’re opening it in their home or in their office and it lives with them.” 

And that connection lives offline. People are hungry for that, Stolz says. 

“Most people just are online all the time, ourselves kind of included. So (this is a) small way to promote people to get out of the metaverse or whatever we’re living in,” he says. 

A scan of an opened zine featuring black-and-white charicature art of vampires.
Photo Credit: Sarah Evenson
A sneak peek into one of Sarah Evenson’s Gay Mail Friend zines—mail that’s notably not bills or ads, they say. All these zines are printed at Workshop for Independent Publishing (WIP), a community print shop in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
A person with light skin wearing a winter jacket, holding envelopes at a USPS drop box.
Photo Credit: Katie Kephart
“It’s kind of this hand-to-hand trade off . . . that feels very, very connecting,” says Gay Mail Friend founder Sarah Evenson.
A pile of folded white paper with black text reading: MY NEIGHBORS ARE NOT TERRORISTS.
Photo Credit: Sarah Evenson
During a surge in Immigration and Customs Enforcement presence in Minneapolis, Sarah Evenson sent out zines inspired by her across-the-alleyway neighbor, Alex Pretti.
Two people with light skin standing at a risograph printer, one with his back to the camera.
Photo Credit: Sunroom
“At a time that we were feeling kind of burnt out, (the Monthly Flyer Club) was an amazing way to have structure to make artwork every month for a purpose,” says Sunroom’s Clare Byrne, left, next to Jacob Stolz and their “third member”: the risograph.

Stories for Connection 

Sarah Evenson started Gay Mail Friend! in January. 

The Minneapolis, Minnesota, book artist’s zine subscription lets the self-described introvert connect to queer, global community—through art. Over the winter, Evenson reached out to libraries, community centers, museums, and archives to get the word out about Gay Mail Friend!   

So far, they’ve got over 80 subscribers. The “friends”—which Evenson hopes this correspondence feels like—contribute anywhere from $5-30 for the monthly cut-and-fold zine. It’s an eight-page book made from one piece of printer paper. 

Inside each Gay Mail Friend! envelope is a perzine full of friendship and connection, Evenson says. This spring, they’re inviting collaborations from other zinesters. It’s a gallery in an envelope. 

“I’m really interested in a record of queer, trans life that can hopefully go and circulate in the community and also be in these different archives for the people who come next, right?” they say. “I’ve benefited so much from being able to read gay zines in archives to understand my history and that part of American history.” 

Five people sitting at a table creating art.
Photo Credit: Janelle Ketcher
A Postal Service for the Dead grief collaging workshop led by founder and director Janelle Ketcher (right). “People do really resonate with writing and creating a community voice or narrative—which is the archive around this kind of human, universal, and at the same time, individual experience,” Ketcher says, adding snail mail is “sacred.”

Letters to Lost Loves 

A few weeks before her late mother’s birthday in 2022, Janelle Ketcher just wished she could send her a birthday card. It was the impetus for founding Postal Service for the Dead. 

Ketcher, from Des Moines, Iowa, realized writing helped connect “the living and the dead” — for her and others. Hundreds of people write and send letters to her P.O. Box in California, and signal whether they’d like them opened or posted online. Hundreds have participated, sharing their handwritten grief with strangers. 

 “There’s this reverence for mail. It’s such a special way to show people that you care about them because you’re taking time to write and send this thing.” 

This thing can be letters to our lost loves. It can be a piece of paper with a story. Or it can be fine art (folded twice!), mailed from one human to the next.