Monthly Gatherings

The smallest and most intimate of the club’s regular occasions, Monthly Gatherings brought together under fifty people at a time — not for a party, exactly, but for an evening of shared, hands-on work in service of everyone else’s mailbox.

At these gatherings the club collectively assembled, addressed, and prepared nearly one hundred different mailings for all members, month after month, year after year. Some years that involved long handwritten letters, calligraphy practice for newcomers (or anyone not yet confident in their own hand), or affixing photographs by way of small corners on cards; other years called for embossing, stamping, and the careful sliding of assemblages into glassine envelopes, and, eventually, into hand-addressed linen envelopes.

It was slow, companionable, faintly ceremonial work — the sort that made the arrival of that month’s artwork feel like it had actually traveled some distance to reach you, rather than merely being printed and dropped in a box.