Join Snail Mail My Email!

Volunteers Turn Emails Into Beautifully Handcrafted and Illustrated Letters

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Nov 12, 2012, 02:00 ET

SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 12, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- With the advent of texting, social media, and other instant forms of communication, today's world can often feel rushed and impersonal. Letter writing may be a lost art, yet there is still something uniquely special and intimate about receiving a letter in the mail.

Enter: Snail Mail My Email. The project, created by artist Ivan Cash, works by having volunteers handwrite and artistically interpret strangers' emails and send these physical letters to the intended recipients, completely free of charge.

This worldwide collaborative art event returns for one week, starting on Monday, November 12, 2012.

During this week, Cash and his team of volunteers will be accepting email letter requests via the project's website (www.snailmailmyemail.org). The emails can also include a request for tangible, custom elements such as a doodle, a kiss, a flower petal, or a spray of perfume. Individual volunteers pay for the postage.

In 2011, 234 volunteers collectively sent 10,457 letters to over 70 countries within a one-month time span, the content of which inspired the 'Snail Mail My Email' book.

Cash's new book, Snail Mail My Email: Handwritten Letters in a Digital World (on-sale now!) is a bound art collection of the most creative, memorable, and heartfelt letters from the original Snail Mail My Email project. The letters themselves are beautifully crafted correspondences covering a wide range of themes from love, gratitude, and hope, to remorse, existentialism, and the bizarre. With the turn of every page is an addictive and artful window into everyday lives and a reminder of the power of personal connection.

"The project's underlying goal has always been to reignite the lost art of letter writing," says Cash. "I hope that between the book, the project's return, and any other exposure, people feel inspired to write and send a letter of their own!"

Ivan Cash is a San Francisco artist who creates socially engaged, new media projects. Cash's projects, have been featured in CNN, The Los Angeles Times, TIME, The Guardian and The Wall Street Journal.

SOURCE Sourcebooks