So, I’ve been thinking about postcards and CLMOOC. The other day I wrote about how excited I am for the new CLMOOC to start. Then, I got to postcard making. Since I am also still working on taxonomy projects (sets of 5 works), I decided to make 5 postcards.
So, I printed some recent pictures of this and that–a few images from my family’s outing to the Creative Africa exhibits at the Philadelphia Museum of Art (I loved the fabric exhibit and Colorspace by Francis Kéré best) a magnolia flower on a tree at school, Falls Bridge in Philadelphia (a longtime favorite subject of mine), and some big leafy plant at Longwood Gardens (Longwood is showing Nightscape again later in the summer. If you are in the area, do NOT miss this.)
Then I thought about what to do with the images. I have been working a lot with text and blackout poetry this year, but that did not seem right for this. I do love vellum, so I thought about having a top layer with some sort of words in vellum. Then, the picture is underneath and a layer of craft paper is under that. I hand sewed them together with embroidery thread. Here are those two.
Then, I didn’t have any more vellum handy, so I started thinking about other options. I decided it would be interesting to hide part of the image and to suggest that the recipient rip the cover off to see more. I used brown craft paper and printed the directions to tear off the cover on top. Then, I cut holes in the paper so that there was a teaser section of the image showing and put another layer of craft paper on the back. Finally I machine sewed all the pieces together. I love the peak-a-boo aspect of the card as well as the fact that if you want to see the picture you have to rip the top. These should not be precious, in my opinion; they are not going in anyone’s keepsake box. Yet, it seems wrong to throw away what someone has made. This fixes that problem. Tear it apart, look at the picture, keep it around for a while, and then send it to the great beyond.
The more I think about it, the more intriguing it is to me that to see the entire image, to make sense of the image which you know is part of a larger whole, you have to alter the work, which in turn breaks apart a different whole image, that of the postcard. I did not think of all that in the moment, but I find it interesting now. I might need to make some more of these.
Ah, making stuff.
Thoughts from School 