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Amanda Nelsen – 40,000 pieces of junk mail turned into art

I don’t know about you but I love getting mail – the good ol’ style. There’s just something utterly romantic about it; the texture, stamps, envelope…such a sensory pleasure – except when you get bills, pizza coupons, the false promises of a politician and the latest Shina-Gel discounted nail polish  from the parlor around the corner (now, I don’t know if Shina-Gel is actually a real product so bear with me).

Not long ago I wanted to give a purpose to all of these paper skeletons – aka junk mail – so I went ahead and purchased the Junk Mail Origami Book. That didn’t go well. With the amount of credit card bills I had I would’ve created a paper version of the Titanic – chubby Rose and girly Leo included.

Thank god someone out there has the tenacity and natural talent to tackle this mailbox plague – cue Amanda Nelsen and her incredible Kinkade Recycled installation; a collection of 40,000 junk mail pieces folded and string bundled into 2 inch cubes that resemble colored pixels. At first I thought I was looking at a giant painting, maybe a rug – then I read about it and I couldn’t resist making it the feature for today’s Artful Friday.

Amanda, is because of people like you that this world is so wonderful.

So, are you guys going to give it a try? How about creating a sculpture with your student loan statements? If you are on the same boat as some of my friends – by the end of your project your sculpture could look like the Eiffel tower. Very artful!

Amanda Nelsen

Reader Interactions

241 Comments

  4. Wow. I mean…WOW. That’s an incredible, amazing, inspiring idea!

    Now if only artists like this would tell the rest of us where to send our junk mail…you know, for the public benefit of beautiful art!

    :)

      • I’ve been collecting interesting junkmail for sooooooo long! people who know me keep complaining about it. I take pictures of flowers or certain words, then use them later. (I once cut up an IKEA catalogue and stuck peices on, to make a pretty picture of flowers in a vase! Thanks to the ‘textiles’ part of it!) I actually just might try that idea by Amanda Nelsen!

  10. This is a great use for junk mail. In my town of Rochester, NY, the Memorial Art Gallery just closed a traveling exhibit of Extreme Materials, where artists made sculptures out of pencil stubs, bars of neutrogena soap. The most impressive one was an artist who took thousands of spools of thread and created with them a huge replica of American Gothic, which one could only view by standing at a distance and viewing through a magnifying glass that inverted the image right-side up. Try to see if this exhibit is traveling to your neck of the woods. Congratulations on getting freshly pressed.

  14. Ha, finally a beautiful use of junk mail. While I think the slow death of mail is sad, I definitely won’t miss junk mail (the only kind of mail I seem to get these days).

  17. Reblogged this on Rhythmic Light and commented:
    Not a lot of people may know this about me (due to my primary work in the theatre) but I probably know more about the visual art world (or try to) than the theatre world. I’m constantly looking for new works of art and find a visit to a gallery one of my favorite activities.

    This is an interesting and beautiful project that I stumble across.

  22. Really beautiful piece! Love artwork that transforms junk/spam/trash into something new and precious again. Reminds me of two artists I recently blogged about that use a similar aesthetic: Max Glaser and Jack Henry – check them out!

  23. Junk-Mail Mosaic!!!
    What a wonderful idea….this or tinder and since I’m not set up w/a woodburning stove I might have to give my shredder a break and look into art for this cursed bane of society. I did tender the notion of using all this junk mail after its been run through the shredder to bulk up the insulation in my attic…maybe I’ll do both!
    Thanks for the idea!

  25. Very Artful indeed. The concept of recycling into art is both beautiful and environmentally friendly. I visualize art in everything from bottle caps to clothing tags to tiny dots of paper in mozaic form. I’m not sure if it’s a talent or a curse.I have a collection of credit card junkmail, the type that come with the mock credit card….I received about 300 between 2006 and 2008…the promo ended and so did the mock cards.
    Thanks you for sharing this wonderful use of junkmail it inspires me to keep doing what I am doing.

  32. My daughter always thinks I’ll be one of those hoarders where you have to push the door open, past all the papers to get to my body. Mmmm, maybe now all I have to do is find some string…where was it?!

  34. Hey, i heard once of this service which contacts retailers on your behalf to stop sending you junk mail, if someone knows of it (i have forgotten) and can tell me, i really want to stop the 10 or so pieces of waste that land in my mailbox everytime i open it. PLEASE PLEASE SOMEONE!

  35. …and forgot to say how much i loved this work!

    it is really beautiful and thought-provoking! love it!

  37. You took something people take for granted and showed them what can be done with it. Taking the passing objects in our life that we tend to not care about and creating it into such a visually striking piece. Great work!

  41. Thank you for sharing! It really is beautiful. But… Could we maybe keep cracks at peoples’ weight down? I’m sure you didn’t mean anything by it, but it almost spoils the entire article. I think Kate Winslet has a beautiful, albeit average figure; then and now.

  46. Amanda very inspiration, the piece came out just beautiful. A lively, lovely idea with recycling the mail. Even coupons can be fun.

  57. Oh my god. How awesome does that look?!? I’d love that in my living room. The creativity some people have is amazing. I truly wish I had the ability to do something this unique. Beautiful.

  61. freaking awesome. 40 000 is a big number. Found some interesting numbers on junk mail on Matadornetwork.com :
    100 million trees are cut down each year to produce junk mail.
    1 million trees offset 48,000,000 pounds of carbon emissions.
    Eliminating junk mail in the US would offset 480,000 cars.
    Plus a tip on how to stop getting paper junk mail (US)
    Thanks for your creative use Amanda! A beautiful alternative to the landfill!
    Cool post Gabriel- congrats on freshly pressed

  65. Amanda, I love, love, LOVE your work! Kudos. Have you seen El Anatsui’s recycled work? I caught a retrospective of his in Austin over the holidays. Fabu. I’m a quilter, and your work (and his) reminds me of quilts. Well done! Cheers, Denise

  69. How cool is that!!! I’ve just put all my recycling onto the street for collection tomorrow morning…..now I’m sorely tempted to bring it all back in!
    Thanks so much for posting this (and Congrats for getting Freshly Pressed!)

  81. finally, someone has shown me the beauty that’s possible in one of the most mundane and irritating plagues of the modern era. thank you for sharing this!

  84. Amanda, there isn’t much for me to say other than “FREAKING AWESOME!” I’ll admit, I’ve pondered making some art out of the junk mail that I receive, and every single time I place it in the recycling bin I have the urge to save it and start on some project. However, when I saw your freshly pressed post I was absolutely blown away. That absolutely rocks! So wonderful, and thank you so very much for sharing! I love it!

  87. This is incredible! I HATE junk mail, and it makes me so sad every time I throw it out (well, in the recylcler), all I think is waste, waste, waste.
    What a beautiful change this is, well done!

  97. This looks fantastic- I have always been fond of textural works. I like the way that colour has been employed and they way that each little group of paper has been sorted and neatly tied up. Thankyou for finding this.

  117. I think I’m also a creative person and all the time I invent or create new ideas to do stuff out of the blue and at times I guess I create art or something else. Like the other day I create a Memory Game by the help of the paper in my magazines. I’m fan of the 3Rs. Cool Art.

  123. You’re right, mail is romantic and alluring. Even though its 98% junk and bills, I find myself at that box day after day with that little piece of hope that somewhere in there will be a letter, addressed to me! For this reason, I started sending out my “Christmas cards” half way through the year… Everyone gets a card in December, but how often do you open your mailbox in June and see “hope your year is coming along well! We’ve been up to…..”

  132. “Chubby Rose and girly Leo…” LOL!! Come on now, I love Rose and Leo!! Oh ,well. Great blog and what a fabulous idea! What would the world be without people who embraced junk?

  139. That is so cool!!! What a great thing to do with junk mail no less!! I’m so used taking the junk mail and tossing it through the shredder or putting it into the recycle him…..this has definitely inspired me to look at “trash” in a whole new way….Very awesome indeed!! Thanks for sharing!!

  143. That is just brilliant. Can’t agree more on the point of loving getting post too – there’s nothing better, especially if it’s hand-made, from a friend. Now I can look forward to junk-mail too, to build a collection :)

  151. Great art. But the idea of the junk mail art is Super Great.
    The art looks awesome and it says to me that…
    ‘Even junk becomes beautiful when it is united and joined together’ :)
    Nice blog again !!

  155. Oh my goodness, that’s incredible! What is the image suppose to be of? Or is there no image at all? I find this form of art very resourceful, innovative, and of course creative. That takes a lot of time and diligence to fold so many pieces of paper and bundle them into cubes like that!

    By the way, I really enjoyed the way you described receiving mail You’re right it is a lot more fun, its tangibility really does make it for an incredible experience. Like a gift during Christmas!

    If it’s alright with you, I started a blog of my own not too long ago and I would like to invite you and your readers to please check out my posts, comment, and subscribe! I would really appreciate any feedback as well as your support by signing up! The link is http://www.logicmeetsreason.wordpress.com Thank you so much!

  159. wow that’s amazing! i never would’ve thought of doing that. I guess that’s why my ‘art’ is music and not drawing or ‘external’ or ‘visual’ art.

  162. WOW! I don’t even know where to begin with this one! This is amazing! How in the world did you ever come up with an idea such as this? You are extremely talented!

  163. This is amazing.
    Now that I think about it, the most colorful pieces of paper that are sent to us in the mail is junk mail… :D
    She turned what is normally discarded without thought, into something that people respect and acknowledge. I love her unique idea!

  167. Congrats on being Freshly Pressed! I was just thinking yesterday morning, “What to do with all this junk mail?!” after my mailman rammed it through my door. I considered the many ways we can reduce printing them altogether – at least 95% of what I receive was unsolicited so one can start there – but I never considered doing anything remotely artful with it. Thanks for the great recos – they are beautiful! My six-year old artist will love this!

  168. wow, I love your blog, and especially your theme! You mind sharing with me how to find a theme like this or who created it?

    And yes, you’re right receiving mail is such a sweet sensory pleasure that is often forgotten because of the rise of email.

    • Hi Joseph! I am actually using one of the WordPress templates, I believe it’s called Obox (you can see more details right at the bottom of the page). I edited the CSS on the blog to make it my own. Hope this helps!

  172. I feel like the letter writers of the past and recyclers of the present have joined in one harmonious piece of brilliance and appreciation. I approve.

  174. I am absolutely in Love with this. I love handwritten letters (blogged about it) but I get a TON of junk mail. This is absolutely magnificent.

  178. Soo many things to say, hope you are reading this!

    1. Beautiful template of this blog, absolutely beautiful.

    2. Beautiful concept

    3. Even more beautiful realization

    4. Congratulations

    5. Start again at point 1 LOL

    I must say, good work sire!

  186. Hi Amanda,
    I am the Gallery Manager for Malton Gallery in Cincinnati Ohio.
    Just wanted to say I LOVE your sculpture!! Beauty from a frightening amount of junk mail, and you gave purpose for all the sacrificed trees! That’s MY kind of art!
    Brenda

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