“A strip of material, as of ribbon or leather... placed between the pages of a book to mark the reader’s place,” the humble, ubiquitous bookmark. Ah, but in the hands of Jinny Baeckler and Emily Townsend, and the 40-some kids who participated in Ms. Townsend’s “make and take” workshop at the Plainsboro Public Library earlier this month, the bookmark becomes a tool for international dialogue — and there’s never enough of that.

   The story goes this way, and it may not even need a bookmark. Through August, nearly 150 bookmarks made by more than 60 artists from all over the world will hang in rows in the library’s gallery/all-purpose room. They share only a few characteristics: they’re all vertical, with holes punched in the top and raffia ties, and their creators’ names and contact specs appear somewhere on them.

   After that, it’s wide-open creativity that traveled in an envelope — “mail art,” in other words. And Ms. Townsend, a mail artist herself, invited this deluge of diversely beautiful bookmarks that came to her via the mail, of course. She says, “It made getting my mail for the last few months quite a treat.”

   Hearing from library director Ms. Baeckler of this summer’s theme, Cultural Crossroads: Discovery Summer 2008, Ms. Townsend promptly suggested “mail art” as one way to bring it to life. A gallery exhibit of international bookmarks, paralleling the theme that will run through the library’s dance, science and art activities for everyone, might open windows on “cultures we don’t look at as often,” Ms. Baeckler says.

   Once the bookmark show was up, Ms. Townsend’s workshop would then make artists and connoisseurs of the kids in attendance. “Everyone can do art,” she declares. “It’s not an elitist thing. It’s the action, the process, not what results.”

   
  So, just what might an artist do with a strip of paper or fabric that may be 6 inches long and up to 4 inches wide? Oh, a great many things, including painting with watercolor or magic markers, using photographs, postage stamps, foil or sparkle or even a spent yellow balloon. Although collages and prints (made from woodblocks, eraser carvings and monotypes) are the two main mediums employed, the bookmarks are mixed media in the truest sense.

   The plot thickens, as the bookmarks are further mixed. Each child at Ms. Townsend’s workshop made two bookmarks, one to keep and one to substitute for her or his favorite on display. The exhibit then came to include international and workshop-produced bookmarks, while every child took home one of each as well.

   Kids were encouraged to contact the artists behind the bookmarks they selected, generating mail from the U.S. to such places as Portugal, Venezuela, South Africa, Russia... and back again.

   Connections made; communication commenced; mail art in operation! Or, as Emily Dickinson might have put it, “There is no frigate like a bookmark/ To take us lands away...”

   And mail art would mean, says Ms. Townsend, starting with decorated envelopes. (When she received the initial 150 bookmarks, they invariably came in artful envelopes, bearing hand-designed stamps and calligraphy, among other elements. She included some of them in her poster advertising the workshop.)

   Mail art is a movement that started in the 1950s and entails working outside the gallery world, Ms. Townsend says. It’s a sharing activity among artists; it’s not commercial and no money is involved.

   Ray Edward Johnson (1927-1995) of Detroit, Mich., who studied at the fabled Black Mountain College in North Carolina, and later lived in New York, is considered the “founding father of mail art.” Early on, he eschewed the abstract painting then in vogue and turned to collage.

   Eventually, Mr. Johnson, who was also involved with performance art, began mail art by sending images and text to people all over. He’s credited with pioneering the use of text in the visual arts.

   To invite mail art in the form of bookmarks for the library exhibit, Ms. Townsend says she contacted those she has “met” through other mail art shows. She also posted calls for mail artists on various Web sites. Then came the deluge.

   Ms. Baeckler cites the cadre of area artists who do one program a summer, contributing to the library’s “rich learning environment.” During April (“youth arts month” at the library), she says, Ms. Townsend was named Plainsboro’s 2008 Community Artist of the Year. In conversation, the two agree about the great value of kids “seeing the effect of the creative force” and how making their own mail art “validates them as artists.”

   But there’s a final chapter — the bookmark exhibit, workshop and swap, with the resulting cross-cultural communications, isn’t the whole story. About 20 special bookmarks, now displayed on a separate gallery wall, will be auctioned off to benefit the library’s building campaign.

   Bidding is underway right now, with winners to be announced at the International Banquet, Aug. 2. (Details in person, by phone, or on the Web site.)

   The story epilogue will be — what else? — the new Plainsboro Public Library, scheduled to open in 2009. Its features will include a glass-walled dedicated gallery (now, the exhibit space doubles as a storytelling locale and serves still other purposes), a health information center on the second floor and a third floor science center.

   And just maybe, free bookmarks at the front desk.

Artistic bookmarks are on view at the Plainsboro Library, 641 Plainsboro Road, through August. Hours: Tues.-Thurs. 9 a.m.-8:30 p.m., Sat.-Sun. 10 a.m.-5 p.m. (609) 275-2897; www.lmxac.org/plainsboro. Emily Townsend on the Web: www.etstudio.net