Letters to the Ocean / 2008

Letters to the Ocean, An ongoing conceptual project, 2003 - Present

Wooden shelves & 1,100 Sent and Returned Letters to the Ocean (installation view)
Work installed for "A Moratorium on Make-Believe" Exhibit at The Regina Miller Gallery

One day in the winter of 2003, I sent my first of many letters to the Pacific Ocean. Within two weeks it was returned with heavy pen marks negating the address and a black stamp that read: “Return to Sender: no such place exists." I then sent another letter with more specific directions and two weeks later it was returned again with the same markings. For the last five years, I have sent a letter to the Pacific Ocean every day. I currently have about 1100 returned letters and I use this project as a daily journal.

At different points over the five years of this project, the overall structure has shifted and changed. After the first year, I had a stack of about 300 letters. As the years have passed the stack has grown so large that I no longer exhibit it as a stack. Its most recent incarnation has taken the form of a wall piece carefully composed with the letters in chronological order from left to right.

It has been curious to notice direct and indirect subtleties that have come to the surface of this project. One obvious examples is how the postage rate and stamp styles have changed over the years. There are other subtle shifts over time, for example, in the past each letter was host to a series of individual markings presumably made by the postal worker who processed the letters (see samples below). In more recent months, these markings have been replaced with a yellow adhesive label indicating the dominant role of electronic sorting and routing.

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