It does happen. Something comes in the mail that changes a person’s life: an acceptance, an invitation, a temptation, a rejection. And whatever comes has a physical material presence; it is a real thing. Of course the mail is often mundane – bills, advertisements, and requests for donations – but those too, are real things. Electronic mail and phone conversations, however popular and potentially efficient, conduct information only.

It’s In the Mail is a series of paintings that had their starting point in the things that have arrived in the mail; the titles refer to those starting points. The images themselves are, more often than not, more than one step removed and consistently employ three elements: 1) the outlines of opened envelopes, 2) rocks with personalities of their own and with memories in geological time and 3) the computer cursor, a reference to the virtual world that can’t do ‘real’ things.

Rhonda Harder Epp
2004