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Chicago Tribune
" 'Anthrax Stamp' Has Feds Going Postal"
by Sean D. Hamill
November 19, 2001

Should current events have the power to make art a crime?

The FBI, Illinois State Police and the Postal Service think they should.

Chicago artist Michael Hernandez de Luna clearly doesn't agree, but he's starting to get the message.

"I can't talk much about it. I don't want it to get out now. I've got problems. I have a lawyer," De Luna said last week, while refusing to admit to sending or creating a controversial letter.

For 10 years, postal inspectors and law enforcement have looked the other way while De Luna and his artistic cohort, Michael Thompson, created bogus stamps depicting everything and everyone from condoms to Richard J. Daley, successfully mailed them, and then sold them as art for more than $2,000 each.

What the normally glib De Luna can't talk about now is what the state police believe is his or Thompson's latest effort to comment on popular culture and pull another fast one on the Postal Service.

State police say that sometime in early October, De Luna or Thompson mailed an envelope. It was addressed to De Luna, had a return address of "The War Department - Office of the Surgeon General," and a pre-struck postmark dated 1942.

But it also had a 34-cent stamp with a black skull and crossbones design on a yellow background, and the word "Anthrax" written on top.

The letter was being sorted at Chicago's main post office near the Loop when it was spotted sometime during the third week in October.

But that was the week after anthrax scares across the nation first began rising to epidemic proportions, including here in Chicago where, in one infamous case, a leftover dollop of guacamole caused a North Side resident to call in a hazardous materials team from the fire department.

With such heightened awareness, when the anthrax stamp was noticed, the post office shut down the area where the envelope was found for several hours until it was determined that it wasn't a risk, said Silvia Carrier, a spokeswoman for the postal inspector's office.

"They're not taking any of this lightly now," Carrier said.

Illinois State Police Sgt. Michael Wargo- who described the letter to an audience of 300 emergency personnel at a homeland security seminar Tuesday- said that the person who sent the letter would probably face federal mail fraud charges, punishable by up to five years in prison.

"There was no powder in it, and no threatening letter, so it wouldn't be more than that," he said.

Wargo said the state police, FBI, and the Postal Service haven't arrested anyone yet in the case, but they do want to talk to De Luna and Thompson.
The Postal Service believed it knew right away where the letter came from.
They have been dealing with De Luna and Thompson for years.

After De Luna and Thompson started showing their work in a gallery in 1995, a team of postal inspectors visited them and, while acknowledging their work and commentary, told them to stop or the next time they'd be arrested and their work would be confiscated.

The pair had continued to make stamps over the years, and last year even put out a book of their work.

And the Oskar Friedl Gallery, on the Near North Side, which first began showing their stamps in 1995, is still showing, and selling, their wares- though gallery manager Barbara Friedl said she hadn't heard about the anthrax stamp.
Though Thompson couldn't be reached, and De Luna wouldn't admit to creating the stamp, Friedl said it fits their work.

"It's a ripe subject, though a touchy one," said Friedl, wife of the gallery's owner. "It wouldn't be in anyone's best interest to send that."

De Luna, 44, who recently returned from a trip to Korea, said he wouldn't talk about the anthrax stamp, but said his art has a purpose.

"I'm an artist and I've got lots of opinions about pop culture," he said. "The last 10 years have been about making art that is humorous for me. And there's all degrees of humor, you've got proper humor and there's really tasteless humor. And I do it all. Sept. 11 brought a lot of real ugly stuff to the surface, and it seems like they're just making a lot of policy to just tap into their ego."

That may be, but the times being what they are, local law enforcement agencies aren't laughing.

"It's not a time to be joking," Carrier said, "even if it is art."

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