Erika Chu, Mailbird, 2020, watercolor, 11 x 14 inches.
“‘Mailbird’ is a watercolor about sending snail mail to friends during quarantine. It’s about channeling my restlessness into writing letters to reach out to old friends and newer friends, far away friends and local friends. When we’re all doing our part to stay at home, the distance of one mile and one thousand starts to feel the same (much too far away).”
“It’s about how I imagine the physical letters we’re writing back and forth will survive to the future as a record to remind me of this time. It’s about my habit of absentmindedly folding paper around the house – like junk mail – into cranes.”
“And it’s an insufficiently small thank you to the USPS in the current crisis: an unassuming service that makes sure medicines and masks show up in time, our ability to vote from home is made possible, and that letters to friends arrive at their doors. Since we still live in a world where mail can’t magic itself up into cranes and fly cross-country into our mailboxes, it’s a wish for the safety of postal workers (the real mailbirds) and a petition for increased protection and compensation for the essential work they do.”
— Erika Chu (Charlottesville, VA)
Find more of Erika’s work on Instagram.