KCAI Underground

KCAI Underground Visit the Art Store, Mail and Print Center in the KCAI Underground, the one stop shop for all things Submit online at kcai.edu/printcenter-orderform.

Visit the Art Store, Mail and Print Center in the KCAI Underground, the one stop shop for all things an art student might need. The Store carries a full line of art and design supplies as well as materials specifically requested by faculty for classes. In addition to its comprehensive selection of art materials, the Store sells an array of convenience items and other KCAI-specific merchandise. If

you need to send a letter or package, the store is also a full-service mail center with both USPS, UPS and FedEx services. The Print Center provides a variety of printing services and/or digital output.

📬 Another arrival for the 6th Annual Underground Mail Art Exhibition, from Jordan Stempleman.“TEXT BOOK MELT DOWN” on on...
08/18/2026

📬 Another arrival for the 6th Annual Underground Mail Art Exhibition, from Jordan Stempleman.

“TEXT BOOK MELT DOWN” on one side. “HAND MADE HAND CUFF” on the other.

Painted directly onto the piece in thick, rough lettering, the words feel somewhere between a protest sign, a punk flyer, a warning, and a very strange textbook cover. The colors reverse from side to side (dusty blue with pepto pink, then pepto pink with dusty blue), making each face feel like the negative of the other.

And because this is mail art, the postal system gets to make its contribution too. Two flag stamps, cancellation marks, scuffed edges, and everything else picked up between the artist’s hands and ours remain part of the finished object.

Handmade, hand-lettered, hand-cuffed, and successfully delivered. 📮

📬 Another arrival for the 6th Annual Underground Mail Art Exhibition, this one from .A dense black-and-white collage of ...
08/17/2026

📬 Another arrival for the 6th Annual Underground Mail Art Exhibition, this one from .

A dense black-and-white collage of people fills the center of the piece, compressing decades of faces, gestures, clothing, and public gatherings into a single crowded image. Individual moments disappear into the larger group, then reappear the longer you look.

The presentation makes the piece feel almost archival (the collage is mounted against a wood-toned field and framed in black), but then the whole object gets dropped into the very un-archival machinery of the mail.

The back is just as considered, with its oversized arrow, layered address label, three flag stamps, blue postal markings, and even the USPS barcode incorporated as another graphic element.

We love a piece that understands that getting there is part of the artwork. 📮

📬 This one arrived looking like it had already lived several lives before finding its way to the Underground.Built from ...
08/17/2026

📬 This one arrived looking like it had already lived several lives before finding its way to the Underground.

Built from layers of repurposed paper, labels, receipts, packaging, photocopies, handwriting, and other everyday scraps, this piece turns the disposable materials of daily life into both artwork and postcard. Even the postage becomes part of the collage, with a vintage car and Barbie sharing space with cancellation marks, postal barcodes, and the scars of the journey.

Flip it over and the accumulation continues. Grocery packaging, dates, fragments of transactions, and a grainy grid of images create something that feels part archive, part evidence board, and part recycling bin archaeology.

We especially love mail art that lets the postal system finish the piece (creasing it, marking it, scuffing it, and adding another layer of information along the way).

Another arrival for the 6th Annual Underground Mail Art Exhibition! 📮

📬 Three postcards, three strange little worlds.Chris Lavalley sent us a trio of collage works for the 6th Annual Undergr...
08/13/2026

📬 Three postcards, three strange little worlds.

Chris Lavalley sent us a trio of collage works for the 6th Annual Underground Mail Art Exhibition, each combining found black-and-white imagery with painted fields of color and bits of landscape that shift scale, time, and place.

A uniformed figure signals beneath an enormous hand and desert horizon. A woman in a white dress perches among monumental red rock formations while a tiny figure wanders below. The Venus de Milo appears transplanted into another desert landscape, accompanied by an equally tiny traveler.

There’s something wonderfully dreamlike about the collisions (museum objects, vintage photographs, anonymous people, monumental landscapes, and everyday postcards all becoming part of the same visual universe).

And, of course, they came through the mail exactly as postcards should, collecting cancellation marks and postal barcodes along the way. 📮

Thank you, Chris, for sending three pieces our way!

📬 Alley cat incoming.This mail art submission from Ryan Bonte keeps things wonderfully simple: a photograph of a lanky g...
08/13/2026

📬 Alley cat incoming.

This mail art submission from Ryan Bonte keeps things wonderfully simple: a photograph of a lanky gray cat caught mid-climb, stretched almost impossibly long against a wooden fence. On the reverse, just two words: “Alley Cat.”

We especially love how sending the photograph through the postal system gives it another layer. Scuffs, cancellation marks, ink, handwriting, and the wear of the journey become part of the piece. The postcard doesn’t just show an alley cat (it has traveled the neighborhood, too).

Another arrival for the 6th Annual Underground Mail Art Exhibition! 🐈‍⬛📮

📬 Two more experiments have made their way through the mail and into the 6th Annual Underground Mail Art Exhibition.Thes...
08/12/2026

📬 Two more experiments have made their way through the mail and into the 6th Annual Underground Mail Art Exhibition.

These postcards are interested in transformation (and in how we decide what we’re looking at).

The first, “Experiments in Kintsugi,” references the Japanese tradition of repairing broken pottery while treating the damage as “a beautiful element of objects.” Against a deep blue field, fractured-looking white marks are crossed by branching seams of gold, turning the idea of breakage into something energetic and visible rather than something to disguise.

The second asks a wonderfully simple question: “Do you see a zebra?” A photograph of flowers has been sliced, shifted, mirrored, and refracted until the familiar becomes strange. Look long enough and new forms begin to emerge.

Repair something and it becomes something else. Rearrange something and suddenly you see something that may (or may not) have been there all along.

And then put a stamp on it and send it through the mail. 📮

📬 Democracy, delivered.Another piece has arrived for the 6th Annual Underground Mail Art Exhibition, and this one makes ...
08/12/2026

📬 Democracy, delivered.

Another piece has arrived for the 6th Annual Underground Mail Art Exhibition, and this one makes full use of the postcard as a public space for political expression.

One side begins with a photograph of a banner quoting suffragette Sylvia Pankhurst: “Coercion is not government.” It’s surrounded by fragments of election mail—YOUR VOTE COUNTS!, EARLY VOTING, congressional districts (and a little handwritten “SOS!”) beside an image of the Smithsonian.

Flip it over and Abraham Lincoln sits amid a dense accumulation of contemporary civic messages: Equal Opportunity, Be a Voter, Protect Vote by Mail, Protect Democracy, Let the People Vote, Time Is Running Out! The postal cancellation lands across the Lincoln Memorial itself, adding another unplanned layer to the collage.

It’s a fitting reminder of what makes mail art so interesting: a work can leave the artist’s hands as one thing, then travel through a massive government system collecting marks, barcodes, cancellations, wear, and evidence of its journey along the way.

And sometimes the medium and the message line up almost perfectly.

📬 Mail art is all about layers and this one gives us something to look through.This beautiful contribution to the 6th An...
08/12/2026

📬 Mail art is all about layers and this one gives us something to look through.

This beautiful contribution to the 6th Annual Underground Mail Art Exhibition comes from Arlyn Johnson and combines an antique geography book plate, African textile, pastel, handmade paper, and encaustic into a richly layered little object.

One of our favorite details is the sheer fabric window stretching across the top. Turn it over and the layering continues with textiles, maps, patterns, metallic accents, and the Swahili proverb:

“To get lost is to learn the way.”

Even the postage becomes part of the collage, with elephants, leaves, a cat, and other stamps extending the visual language of the work right into its journey through the mail.

Thank you, Arlyn, for sending this one our way!

📬 Another thoughtful piece of mail art has arrived at The Underground!This postcard from Luke Firle layers charcoal, wat...
08/06/2026

📬 Another thoughtful piece of mail art has arrived at The Underground!

This postcard from Luke Firle layers charcoal, watercolor, graphite, and geometric forms. Four loosely rendered figures emerge from a textured field, while a vivid band of orange cuts across the work, anchoring the composition with striking contrast. Delicate violet flowers soften the scene, creating a compelling balance between gesture and structure.

Thank you, Luke Firle, for contributing this beautiful piece to the 6th Annual Underground Mail Art Exhibition. Each postcard that arrives expands the exhibition in unexpected ways, reminding us that the mailbox can be a gallery and the postal system a creative network.

📬 Two more remarkable pieces of mail art have arrived at The Underground!These companion postcards by Andrew Hagen embra...
08/06/2026

📬 Two more remarkable pieces of mail art have arrived at The Underground!

These companion postcards by Andrew Hagen embrace the quiet beauty of age, texture, and history. Built from layers of stained paper, vintage ephemera, and anatomical illustrations, each piece feels less like a postcard and more like an artifact waiting to be uncovered.

One postcard features a watchful eye and a row of numbered teeth embedded within weathered paper, while the other pares the imagery down even further: a skull and dental studies floating in a warm, sepia field. The worn surfaces, muted palette, and visible traces of previous marks suggest that every layer has a story, even if it remains untold.

We also love how the mailing surfaces become part of the work. Vintage postcards, hand-addressed labels, and carefully chosen stamps remind us that these pieces weren't just made; they traveled, collecting their own history along the way.

Thank you, Andrew Hagen, for sending these thoughtful additions to the 6th Annual Underground Mail Art Exhibition. They bring a quiet, archaeological presence to this year's growing collection.

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4415 Warwick Boulevard
Kansas City, MO
64111

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