WEST HOLLYWOOD, Calif. — Nowadays, it’s easy to stay in touch through email or text messages, but when artist Beatie Wolfe missed her friends and family during the COVID-19 shutdown, she decided to go old school and write them letters and send postcards through the mail.
“For me, during lock-down, the one thing keeping me sane was writing letters, you know, friends, family, and it just felt like a great way of staying connected,” Wolfe said.
But with the decline in mail volume, the USPS is currently under threat with mail sorting machines and mailboxes being removed. That’s when Wolfe decided to team up with Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo fame to start Postcards For Democracy, a project that advocates for the United States Postal Service by asking everyone to create postcards to mail to them.
“We felt like it was just a lovely way of sort of supporting this, you know, vital service and this way of staying connected and you know, just feeling joyful basically via this kind of lost art, so that’s how Postcards For Democracy came about,” Wolfe said.
And it’s not just the lost art of writing and sharing stories by hand. They want you to design and make your postcard. For the cost of a postcard stamp, 35 cents, Wolfe and Mothersbaugh will collect your mailed artwork as part of a nationwide effort to preserve the 225-year-old postal service.
“This was one of the first designs, you know, just when we were figuring out what we were doing,” Wolfe said while holding up a postcard. “It’s got different forms of mylar, which I am sort of obsessed with because I built a space chamber out of mylar.”
As artists, Wolfe and Mothersbaugh are both known to experiment with style, design, form, genre, and media and have always wanted to team up on a creative project. When they realized a postcard has the power to preserve everyone’s right to vote, they reached out to everyone.
“We’ve already collected thousands of these cards, and we’re thinking maybe this deserves a show later on,” Mothersbaugh said. “It’s just kind of amazing the quantity that [is] coming in. They’re so many, and the quality is so great. They’re all so different.”
Being different is really what makes America great. Coming from South London, Wolfe moved to Los Angeles three years ago to pursue a career, but now feels art can play a bigger role in how she connects with others.
“So everyone and anyone can be a part of this,” Wolfe said.
And everyone from art students to professional skateboarder Tony Hawk is joining the movement.
“It’s supporting USPS, our right to vote, but also it’s just a wonderful way of staying connected and being a part of something,” Wolfe said. “Art is something that ultimately connects us all, so please get involved.”