Liberate Your Art 2015 Postcard Swap

Recently, I participated in an Art Postcard Swap hosted by Kat Sloma, a local art photographer that has been running this event for the past 5 years. Each participant makes printed photographs of artwork they’ve created. These can be photos of their paintings, collages, jewelry, pottery, photography — any medium possible, but you don’t send original art, you make prints into postcards. This helps people learn how to make prints of their work and gives them a reason to share their creations with others. For the first time, I decided to join in and mailed Kat 6 postcards, 6 stamps and 6 self-addressed labels. On a Sunday morning mid-March I helped Kat along with 7-8 other volunteers put on the stamps and address labels for each postcard. We’re talking 1290 postcards for over 200 participating artists! Kat had piles of postcards, well organized and all sorted for every artist lined up throughout her house, but with all of us helping we were finished in just a couple of hours. Then she mailed them off in 6 different batches (adding one of her own for the last mailing) during the next 3 weeks so we’d receive them over time rather than all at once.

This was a great opportunity to see new artwork from all over the world, meet new artsy friends and get some snail mail that’s fun for a change!! I received postcards from Mary Jane in Brisbane Australia, Kristina from California, Lisa from I think Minnesota (your writing is slightly obscured by the PO), Linda from Virginia, Lorraine (unknown) and lastly from Kat. Thank you Kat for hosting and making this such a terrific event!

Here are the lovely postcards I received:

And here are the ones I sent:

It was great seeing all of the different postcards, decorated envelopes and creative energy put into each piece the day I helped out with labeling—Thank you everyone that joined in liberating your art!