Hello! If you're paying attention to the dates on our blog posts, I wouldn't hold it against you if you assumed The Postcard Collective has stalled, or even stopped entirely. Not the case!
We're still here. We're still making postcards. Most importantly, we're still finding new ways to promote creativity through the postal service.
New things are on the horizon. Watch out!
Actually, it was a deliberate choice to push this one back. Why, you ask?
Three letters (or four words, if you prefer): SPE.
In case you haven't heard the news, we'll be giving a panel discussion at next week's national Society for Photographic Education conference. It's called Make, Stamp, Ship, Receive: Four Years with the Postcard Collective. We're scheduled for 1pm-2:45pm in Keys 3-4 on Friday; if you're attending the conference, come by and say "hello". We'll have lots of these fancy postcards (see below) for you to take home and/or send to friends colleagues, loved ones, or complete strangers.
Now, what does all this have to do with the call for entries? Upon examination of our annual schedule, you'll notice that the call for Spring exchange entries typically ends on March 1st. Since our SPE panel is scheduled for March 7th, the folks in the audience would have to wait until May to enter. I don't know about you, but I'd likely forget about my excitement over the course of two months. Put simply, we wanted to provide SPE conference goers the opportunity to be considered for participation in the Spring 2014 exchange.
The exchange will still happen on May 1st.
Having said all that, go fill out our entry form for the Spring 2014 Exchange!
The Board of Directors' votes have been tallied, and a decision has been made. We had a really strong set of entries this season, and I'd like to thank everyone who took the time to submit an entry. Below is the list of participants chosen for the Fall 2012 exchange.
I had been planning to start up a collaborative mail art project since mid-2007. Fifteen months ago (three years later), I finally ran out of excuses and put my plan into action. Thus, the Postcard Collective was born. The Collective was, initially, an experiment. I sought to determine whether the mail art model is sustainable in the age of the Internet; in other words, I wanted to see if there was still a desire among artists to share their work in the form of tangible objects. A few days later, I had my answer: yes!
This project was (literally) an overnight success. I had put out a call for the Spring 2010 exchange on my blog, and announced the blog post on Twitter, optimistically hoping for 20 participants over the next two months. Man, was I wrong about that. I had met my goal within the first 24 hours, and suddenly found myself worrying about taking on too many people. I closed the flood gates and turned to a word-of-mouth approach to acquiring members. Since then, the Collective has taken on a truly spectacular set of active members, and transcended my wildest fantasies about what it could be and become something much bigger than myself, something important.
Looking back on the last year, managing the Collective has been an extremely rewarding experience. I'm grateful to those who've helped me bring this crazy little scheme to fruition. But, as a grad student entering my thesis year, it's no longer possible for me to be solely responsible for this project. So, in the spirit of keeping things going in my (partial) absence, I have assembled a dedicated board of directors to help make decisions, publicize the project, organize some group exhibitions, and many other administrative tasks. Not to worry, I'll still be pulling levers and pushing buttons behind the curtain; the only difference is that now I'll be able to get a full night's sleep every once in a while.
We've made several major changes to our operational procedures. I'll spare you most of the boring details, but I would like to highlight one that I feel is the most exciting. We are now actively seeking new artists! We're still ironing some of the kinks out of the system, but the plan is to allow 15 non-member participants into each postcard exchange. Calls for entry will be posted here on the blog as well as our announcement list (you can subscribe via the form at the top of this page) three months before the scheduled mailing dates. For more information, take a look at our Call to Artists page.
We have also put together a team of bloggers to keep a steady flow of interesting content, so stay tuned for that!
Needless to say, I'm thrilled to see what the future holds for the Postcard Collective. I have no idea what to expect, so I'll just keep making my postcards and see what happens.
I spent the larger part of my day yesterday hanging the show. I'm quite happy with the results, despite a few challenges that the space threw at me. Here are a few installation shots.
The show will be up in the University of Arizona School of Art Graduate Gallery until May 11, so if you're in the Tucson area, come by and take a look!
The Collective is finishing up the first round of mailings. It's been exciting to receive postcards from the 29 artists that participated; I can't wait to get going on another round!
We will be having an exhibition of the postcards in Tucson, AZ at the University of Arizona School of Art Graduate Gallery from April 26th - May 11th. The reception will be Tuesday, April 27th from 6pm - 8pm. If you're in the Tucson area, please come by to take a look. If you would like more information about the exhibition, please feel free to send me an email.
I'd like to thank everyone involved for helping to make this project such a surprising success!