Mary Welcome

Biography

Mary Welcome (Palouse, Washington) is a cultural worker collaborating with remote landscapes and rural communities. Her investigations into the American landscape are a chronicle from years on the road. She uses conversational research, publications, performance, picnics, and play to express and understand the places we situate ourselves within. As an artist-activist, her projects are rooted in community engagement and the development of intersectional programming to address hyper-local issues of equity, cultural advocacy, inclusivity, visibility, and imagination.

Mary Welcome used her time in residence to expand the creative research already spanning over a decade in “God Bless the USPS,” a performative endurance research project which she began with a spontaneous photo of the post office in her hometown of Palouse, Washington in 2012. By meticulously photographing and archiving post office buildings across the country (with special attention to remote, rural, and neighborhood posts), she is building a vernacular map of our communications commons as a nation. She thinks of them like “a fingerprint of the place.” Surel’s Place gave her an opportunity to explore, research, interview, photograph, and present on post offices across Boise, Ada, Elmore, Canyon, and Gem counties.

During her residency, Welcome led the workshop “Make Good Cheer: Holiday Cards as Mail Art.” The workshop included presentations on anecdotal samples of mail art projects, readings from local historical correspondence, and local postal history.

Welcome gave a historical lecture reading and artist talk during her culminating event. She was interested in the character of the USPS commons of southern Idaho: their stewardship, their stories, and their futures. The way the performative endurance research was presented that night was specific to our community. Alongside documenting interviews, she added 62 Idaho and regional post offices to over 2,000 she’s already investigated, but there are still nearly 18,000 left to go.

This programming was supported in part by the Western States Arts Federation (WESTAF) and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Gallery