Postcards for
Democracy
The Story
Ahead of the 2024 November presidential election, artistic visionaries Mark Mothersbaugh and Beatie Wolfe join forces to re-activate Postcards For Democracy - their non-partisan, collective mail art campaign.
This collective mail art campaign, originally launched in lockdown ahead of the 2020 election, stirred tens of thousands of people to create and contribute to the public art movement, supporting USPS in the process, and all the while reminding and mobilizing people to vote. Mothersbaugh and Wolfe received postcards from every part of the U.S. (and across the world) with the ever-growing collection first exhibited at the Rauschenberg Gallery before a selection of the art went into the Smithsonian. Such a chord was struck that mail art is still being received today four years on!
As democracy and our right to vote still hangs in the balance, Postcards for Democracy invites everyone and anyone to create a piece of mail art and send it in to become part of this public art demo, with an exhibition and book to follow. With the aim of the campaign being to encourage as many people as possible to vote, you can join it by buying stamps, making a piece of postcard art and mailing it to: 8760 Sunset Blvd.
Mark Mothersbaugh
As a young art student at Kent State University, Mothersbaugh first started making postcard art in the early ’70’s and exchanging work with known and unknown artists alike. Through these exchanges, he realized that he was creating an image bank and a lyric collection that served as a basis of inspiration that he would later use in the creation of his seminal art-rock band, DEVO. Since then, he has filled over 490 archival volumes of 100 cards each. These cards became the basis of his most recent show Myopia, a retrospective beginning in 2015 focusing on modern man’s ongoing, internal dialogue of beatnik stream of consciousness poetry, the surrendering of the intellect to the primordial and science vs. faith
Mark has shown his visual art in over 125 solo exhibits over the last 35 years, with touring shows “Homeland Invasion”, "Beautiful Mutants", and “Myopia", a 3,000 object retrospective in 2015. His art has been featured on numerous books, album art, and consumer products. He has collaborated musically with artists such as Brian Eno, David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Beck, The B52s, and Neil Young to name a few
He was given an honorary doctorate of humanitarian letters from Kent State in 2008.
www.markmothersbaughart.comBeatie Wolfe
“Musical weirdo and visionary" (Vice) Beatie Wolfe has beamed her music into space, been appointed a UN role model for innovation, and held a solo exhibition of her ‘world first’ designs at the V&A Museum.
Named by WIRED as one of "22 people changing the world,” Wolfe is at the forefront of pioneering new formats that bridge the physical and digital. Wolfe's latest innovations include a visualization of 800,000 years of CO2 data, which premiered at the Nobel Prize Summit; a Brain Installation which was exhibited at the London Design Biennale in Somerset House and a Big Oil project which won Prix Ars Electronica’s Golden Nica. Other recent projects include the world's first bioplastic record with Michael Stipe and a new body of work with Brian Eno.
Wolfe is also the co-founder of a groundbreaking research project looking at the power of music for dementia.
www.beatiewolfe.com
