EEEEEEEK! It's a skull invasion! The contents of Prosthet's Pacman envelope is spilling all over the wall, sending skulls rampaging all over the place.

It's lovely to see some more mailart from B, the Snailmailer, whose artistic and postal experimentation started as a result of my REAL wall. Do visit her blog, it's quite a fascinating place!

Sue Bowen - your post arrived! So did your second one! Check it out on the right of the wall under Prettylily's cyclops!

As you can see, alphabet month turned up a lot of good stuff on E-day for Elena. It's so lovely to see that she is inspiring so many people with her quilling

I was asked to do a mailart workshop with the Masters Art Education students, at the university that I work at, most of whom were teachers.

Before the session, the students put a selection of my mailart up on the wall, then I done a little talk about how the mailart got to me and what mailart is. I explained how using mailart in the classroom allowed students to create artwork without fear of criticism from those around them.



The students were asked to take a postcard down from the wall that appealed to them, then to create their own piece of mailart which they were to send back. This allowed students to create their first piece of mailart, and illustrated that mailart was art without a context of the artist.

After they created their artworks, the students presented their art to the rest of the class, explaining why they had chosen the pieces they did and explained their responses.



As an extension to this lesson, the students were asked to make a piece of mailart about themselves. This is to be sent to their tutor, without their name on it. The idea is to allow them total freedom of expression. The tutor will then put up their received artwork in the next lesson and the students will be able to view the shows without revealing their identity.

Personally, I didn't like presenting artwork at school in front of my peers. The idea of remaining anonymous but being able to listen to peoples comments on my artwork without them knowing that I made it would have made me much more open to listening. The commentary that I expect to come out would be about the art and not about me as a person.



I look forward to seeing what the students produce and will post the results up here when I get the chance (and if I get the consent)

The main component on today's wall is from Greek mailartist, Katerina Nikoltsou, who has been avidly photographing the buildup of rubbish in Thesaloniki, where she lives. Since the global financial crash, bins have been overflowing in the streets and some of her Little Big Stories present these pictures in a way that gets past all your defences.

The adventures of Ben the bin and Bev put a twist on the bin photos with the simple addition of expressive faces and captions that are hilarious. But underlying the humour is a sad tale that in fact, the greed of our bankers has left a country in ruins. Genius.

Benjamin Shaw has sent a package of his new envelopes - you can see the first one on the bottom row. The other 9 in his new series will be up on display shortly, or you can check out his site and see them even earlier!

One of the best things about running my REAL wall for the last 2 years has been inspiring a whole lot of people I have never met to make art. I find it amazing that my little project, that started off as a little joke to amuse myself actually gets people to pick up a pencil and draw something.

Even more exciting lately, is how this year, after reactivating my facebook account and feeding my flickr feed in, some people I have actually met are starting to create mailart too. With the relentless barrage of mailart feeds that they get, I think my friends are starting to get the idea that facebook wall posts don't cut it for me any more! So this year I've started seeing mailart from people I know in my mailbox! What a rush!

The big envelope in the middle right is from a friend Jen, who travels the world as a perennial nomad. She always sends postcards from wherever she goes, and regular viewers of my REAL wall will no doubt have seen a piece from her.

She decided to pick up the pencils this time and pimped up the envelope, which made me really happy! We've only met once, as she is the girlfriend of a friend of mine, and we met when they passed through London last, but I was so pleased that my REAL wall has brought the artist out of her!

I wonder what that is escaping from Prosthet's Pacman envelope...?

ON the bottom row is a great envelope of envelopes from Down Under. I'll open it soon, the packaging is GREAT!

Thanks to Gabby, Robert, Heavenly Love, and all of you who contributed to this one. There are contributions sourced from Mailart 365, Postcrossing, IUOMA and the Little Big Stories show all coming together in one place. Where else would you find so much talent in one place I sometimes wonder