Barbara Hashimoto Makes Art Out of Junkmail

We all get inundated with seemingly never-ending streams of junk mail in our mailboxes, but Barbara Hashimoto is waist-deep in it. The New Jersey-born artist has been collecting it since 2007 for an installation called ‘Reverse Trash Streams: The Junk Mail Project’, and it’s truly amazing to see how much wasteful junk mail one woman was able to gather and shred. She has filled room upon room with it, creating ethereal seas of paper. Perhaps the most poignant moment of this project was the night Hashimoto piled armload after armload of it onto a piano while musician Edward Torrez played, creating a mountain of junk mail that threatened to engulf him.

The project was inspired by stomach-turning statistics about the wastefulness of junk mail, including these ones: Americans receive 77 billion pieces of junk mail annually, and the average American will spend an 8 months of his or her life handling junk mail. Amazing.

Check out this video by EarthFirst’s own Dorothee Royal-Hedinger for Fresh Cut:

Hashimoto’s sculptures, installations and performances have been presented from Chicago to Los Angeles, and you can still see the installations through the 45-foot floor-to-ceiling storefront windows at the 2003 South Halsted Street complex of the Chicago Arts District until December 31st.

Link [Barbara Hashimoto]

Green DIY Holiday Crafts: Pop-Up Junk Mail Cards

Making your own holiday cards – let alone pop-up holiday cards – may seem like something best left to the Martha Stewart wannabe craftmasters, but it’s actually much easier than it sounds and it’s a great way to use up scrap paper like all those junk mail catalogs desperate retailers are sending out right now. The blog Junk Mail Gems created this awesome pop-up reindeer card from 100% recycled junk mail using Robert Sabuda’s easy pop-up card tutorials.

From Junk Mail Gems:

I added the red nose by simply using a hole punch on a piece of red junk mail and gluing the resulting dot on one side of the folded nose, and then painted on the eyes. The piece on the left side that I wrote on is the inside of a security envelope. I used a menswear catalog for the main card and the reindeer…the front and back covers, since they are a thicker stock.

Check out the selection of tutorials over at RobertSabuda.com and make a few craft masterpieces of your own! Though not holiday-related, my favorites are the Star Wars ones. Hey, just make them green and red and add a few little paper ornaments and they’ll work!

Link [Junk Mail Gems] + [Robert Sabuda]

Stop the Junk Mail Monster!

Most everyone hates junk mail but do you know the extent to which it destroys forests and wastes your time? According to the nonprofit ForestEthics, every year more than 100 billion pieces of junk mail—almost 900 pieces per household—arrive in American mailboxes. Here are some facts from their website:

Junk mail in America accounts for about 30% of all the mail delivered in the world and more than 100 million trees a year are logged to produce it. Almost half of junk mail goes to landfills unopened, yet Americans still spend eight months of their lives dealing with it. The Canadian Boreal Forest and Indonesian tropical forest—both play a vital role in protecting us from the effects of global warming—are being destroyed to supply paper to this wasteful industry.

Did you read that people? Eight months wasted by opening, stacking, tearing up and throwing out junk mail! This has got to end. Do your part to stop junk mail by signing the petition at donotmail.org.

Did you know? Greenhouse gases created each year by junk mail are the annual equivalent of:

-9,372,000 average passenger cars

-11 coal-fired power plants

-Heating 12.9 million homes

-Mowing more than 20 billions lawns

[via ForestEthics]

10 Creative Responses to Junk Mail – From Art to Garden Mulch

Who likes junk mail, anyway? It kills millions of trees, and most of it ends up in landfills or littering the streets.  It clogs our mailboxes and puts us at risk of identity theft.  With the amount of junk mail that arrives daily seeming to increase constantly, you may be wondering what’s the best way to deal with it.  Well, the folks over at ProQuo have gathered 10 creative responses to junk mail – from custom portraits and sculptures to handmade recycled paper and garden mulch.  Here are a few of them – check out the rest at ProQuo.com.

Link [ProQuo] via [BoingBoing]

Bash Back at Bulk Mail: Send a Brick Back to Bulk Mailers on Their Dime- Legally!

Junk mail is a pain in the ass. You get all excited to check your mail, hoping for a fatty paycheck or a steamy note from Gladys in HR or at least your FerretFancy magazine, but instead you get shat on with bills for your most recent bladder operation and a ton of crap catalogues and credit card offers.

Besides being downright disappointing, crap mailings also use up around 100 million trees, around 30 billion gallons of water, and wastes about 300 million dollars in local tax money per year. Makes you just wanna leave a flaming shit on those bulk-mail guys’ doorsteps, am I right?

Well, check out this brilliant trick from the Office of Strategic Influence. Apparently, you can use those handy business-return envelopes to mail your steamy dump free of charge. The best part is that the poor bastards actually have to pay 20 cents per pound to receive your stool sample.

Okay, so it’s technically not legal to send poop, but you can definitely get away with sending something awkward and cumbersome like a brick. And there isn’t anyway they can track you down. Bwahahahaha! So fight the good fight, send a brick to bulk!

Link [Office of Strategic Influence]