Recipient of a Now Art Grant
Received a Now Art Grant for Truth Cards a project to be completed by November 2007.
Below is a description of the project. A website will accompany the project and is being produced in collaboration with my website designer Krystian Kochanski.
Truth Cards
In the ritual of utilizing a generic sentiment to give grandma on her birthday or a co-worker for her new baby, we use the greeting card-a combination of non-specific image and text. What is it about these flat words surrounded by pastel flowers on a piece of paper that continues to take us back to the store to look for another? Why do we choose this paper medium to state the things gone unsaid? How can a card be used to state difficult truths and explore undercurrents in our relationships? As an artist, I’m most interested in works that can shift one’s daily experience by encasing something challenging in an everyday known object—in this case, the greeting card.
Most recently I’ve been buying cards from stores, scanning them in, retaining the image and font and shifting the wording only slightly. The cards are then returned to the original site and placed among the originals. Using social spaces where cards are sold, allows anyone looking at greeting cards the access to these “truth” cards. Humor is an element to this body of work, as I am interested in giving the power to the card giver. For example, cards to a “Special Sister”” and “Terrific Father” are slightly altered to a “Competitive Sister” or a “Terrible Father”. The inside text is shifted minimally, just enough to change the cards meaning.
For the Now Art project, I would like to open this work up to other artists who would like to participate as card makers. I believe there are endless possibilities for the appropriation of the greeting card as an instrument for exploring and revealing familial, social and political truths.
Please contact me if you are interested in participating and being shown on the Truth Cards site. Each artist will have a page devoted to their card, a description of their work and a link to their individual website.