Tropical Collage

My busy art weekend over Thanksgiving included a new series of postcard collages.

Post-Vintage Postcard Booklets

A few years ago I bought a pile of vintage postcard booklets. As I was deciding what to do with them, I had the idea to start making my own postcard booklets. I did not intend to make booklets that would be printed and reproduced, but instead to make individual, hand-made postcard booklets. Perhaps as we run short of vintage materials we should all start making our own.

For this project I began with a few different prototypes. I experimented with various papers and other materials. I chose subject matter familiar to the old postcard booklets and started on a series of small paintings of mostly landscapes based on my frequent road trips around the Western U.S. After a couple of months I had created over 100 4”x6” paintings for this series. The final step was to sort the pieces and assemble them into eight hand-made postcard booklets. Further examples of the work can be seen at tofuart.com and some prints based on the work are also available.

Send Someone a Postcard

Brick Block, 6”x6”, mixed media on board

In some ways things are more personalized now that we can email our travel photos or post them on a photo or social networking site. It also is an immediate experience. Friends, family and the most tenuous of acquaintances can let us know where we are on vacation. And in some ways, it’s not very special at all, and certainly less of a personal experience for the recipient. And what is really the lasting power of these electronic images. They are out there in the intersphere forever and yet they disappear just as easily. 70 years from no one will find your digital photo in some box. The real pieces of mail are just more special. Send a postcard, in the future some artist will repurpose it.