Six Sunset Park artists join waterfront exhibition

On July 10, an art show exhibiting a nontraditional art form — mail art — opened in Chashama’s artist studios at MADE Bush Terminal, 13 42nd St. The show is titled Mitsuko Brooks: All the Mail Art I Have in My Possession, 2011–2025. It features mail art created by Mitsuko Brooks, a Crown Heights-based artist who previously lived in Bay Ridge for many years, as well as large-scale paintings that recreate mail art Brooks previously created but no longer possesses.

Mail art is more of a movement than a definable aesthetic. Pioneered by artist Ray Johnson in the 1950s, mail art most often consists of small art pieces that are not placed in envelopes but mailed as-is, with stamps placed directly on the art.

Mitsuko Brooks’s mail art is mixed media. Most of the pieces displayed in All the Mail Art were created using book covers removed from library books during rebinding. Brooks has worked in libraries for more than a decade. She wrote, drew, painted and collaged on the covers before sending the completed pieces to friends.

“The library throws out these book covers, so I save them and gather materials in a collage. Then I put the stamps on them, write the to and the from, and then send them through the postal system,” Brooks explained.

Jessica, Brooks’s friend, former classmate at Cooper Union and collaborator who helped mount All the Mail Art, asked to be identified by her first name. She explained that mail art is meant to expand the definitions of what art can be. “There was one artist that put a stamp on a metal dustpan and sent it through the mail,” she said.

Brooks got into mail art after growing up accustomed to sending physical mail to communicate with friends.

“I was in a military family, so we lived on different Air Force bases. This was before the internet, so I would write letters to my friends and I would collage on the envelopes. So I’ve always been into writing letters to bridge this gap of separation from someone I care about. When I found out about the mail art movement, it was a perfect extension of that,” Brooks said.

Chashama offers inexpensive space, hopes to serve Sunset Park and its artists

Chashama, the nonprofit that operates the art studios and community workshop space at MADE, has had a presence in Sunset Park since 2007, when it leased space in the Brooklyn Army Terminal. The spaces at MADE opened more recently.

Miles Brautigam and Ariana Fleet, operations managers at Chashama, recently curated a show at MADE Bush Terminal that includes the work of six Sunset Park-based artists out of 15 total. The show, Shorefront: Where Water Meets Industry, is on view in the first-floor lobby of Building A through Aug. 28.

“We did an open call model for this show and looked for Sunset Park artists. We found that there are a lot of artists who live and work in Sunset Park,” Fleet said.

Brautigam made the point that “artists are sometimes the first to enter up-and-coming areas, which attracts other investment to the area.”

The Sunset Post has reported on this as it applies to Sunset Park — from the outsize attention Industry City receives in the area to friction between NYCEDC, which oversees the MADE campus, UPROSE and other parties over who will control the fate of the Sunset Park waterfront, as waterfront property becomes increasingly valuable.

Brautigam and Fleet said they want to make sure Chashama gives back to the community rather than simply leasing space in it.

“The whole purpose of Chashama is to provide affordable real estate to artists, theatre artists, small business owners. We want to do the same thing in Sunset Park,” Brautigam said.

What’s next for Brooks

Brooks is soon off to the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts, for a residency lasting several months, which she described as “the biggest highlight of [her] career.”

“At first I thought I was going to make just a bunch of paintings while I’m there because I’m going to have a space and I don’t have to go to my day job, but I don’t know. As time goes on, I’m like, maybe I could just make a bunch of mail art while I’m there and send it to friends,” Brooks said.

Mitsuko Brooks: All the Mail Art I Have in My Possession, 2011–2025 is on display through Aug. 27 and available to view by appointment. To set up a time to see the show, email Brooks.