From Synesthesia to Peonies: More Artist Trading Cards from Wonderful People!

I belong to a wonderful group of artists who make (mostly paper) Artist Trading Cards. We had another meeting a couple of weeks ago, and my last posting showed the cards I made for it. Now it's time to see the goodies I collected!

John Tallackson, a gifted young printmaker and community organizer, dropped a bombshell at this meeting - he told us he's recently learned that he has "synesthesia." What, you may ask, is synesthesia? It's a neurological gift - he sees numbers and letters has having specific colors. For his batch of cards, he translated words into the colors they represent to him. My card's word is "KISS"

 - Can you make out the outline? He sees "K" as a brilliant red, "I" as blue, and "S" as shiny white. John has been talking with a university-based expert studying synesthesia, and is just starting to understand more about his lifelong learning style and how it relates to his extroardinary artistic gifts. See more of John's  work on his Facebook page, or at JohnTallacksen.com. Learn more about synesthesia and the role it has played for many different kinds of artists (including musicians) here.

John T. Watson is a pastor as well as an artist, and in this card, he posed a question raised by the whitewashing scene in the book Tom Sawyer - What is the social value of "clever?" Clever can be cruel. Where is the love? I never liked that scene in the book. This card captures it.

 Karla  Vasquez is a community activist who brings farmer's markets to low-income neighborhoods. Her compassion was no doubt influenced by the fact that she has Type 1 Diabetes. Just as John Tallacksen makes the most of his synesthesia, Karla here turned her health condition - and in this case, her used blood test strips - into fascinating art - specifically, a mandala.

There's real blood in this card. It's incredible.

Marian Sunabe is a wonderful artist with a busy day job as a school counsellor. She loves to make collages with vintage photos. In this exchange, I lucked into her ATC about the U.S. President I most love to hate, Tricky Dick.

 Some of today's political figures actually make me miss Richard Nixon.

Finally, Sue Ko made charming representations of game pieces that her Korean grandmother used to play. The game immigrated from Japan to Korea during the Japanese occupation in World War II.  It's known as "Flower Cards," "Go Stop" or "Hwatoo" in Korean. The cards are organized and named by month, and the peony here is from the June set. Sue has warm memories of the clicks the plastic tiles made when she played with her grandmother's set. Her version is made from cut paper.

More images of the game and explanations of how it's played are here and  here.

My gratitude to my fellow ATC "players", and especially to Jenny Goto for hosting a beautiful event!
For more, Click on "Artist Trading Cards" or "ATCs" in the word cloud on the right.

Remember Film? Artist Trading Cards from Photography Ephemera

You meant to  do something creative this summer, but the weeks slipped by. Despair not! Here's the solution: Inform 3 to 8 of your least craft-o-phobic friends (or casual acquaintances) that you will be swapping Artist Trading Cards at, say, 3 o'clock next Sunday.

Artist Trading Cards are a bona fide international movement, and it's no wonder, because anyone can do them and they're addictive. They measure 2 1/2"  x 3 1/2", you can cut them out of paper, cardstock, quilts, more quilts, fiber, chocolate bars, titanium plates, or whatever. Embellish them in any way you please, swap them and have each person talk about them, and voila, a low-stress way to have a lot of creative fun and get to know people quickly and profoundly.

And speaking of stress, they're also, as it turns out, a way to repurpose few ounces of the stuff from closing down your parent's home of 50 years.

I'm a member of a wonderful ATC group has met about 4 times over the last couple of years, and we had another meeting/afternoon potluck scheduled for last weekend. About two weeks before I found myself with some extra time and went digging through my paper ephemera bins.

I found some old photographs, photo mailers, negatives, and failed photos from the 1950s-1980s saved from clearing out my parents' house, that  I couldn't quite throw away. The mailers had fabulous graphics, like this elephant,

The negatives, and many of the photos, were shrouded in mystery - the person above is possibly my mother, and I don't have a clue as to who these two boys below might be..... (If you recognize them, let me know.)

The film mailers went to all kinds of far-flung places, including to Lincoln, Nebraska! (our family lived in New York at the time)

The postmark above is 1957. Mailing cost: two cents. I put more of the mailer on the back.

The quotations came from my disintegrating copy of Bartlett's familiar quotations.

 (Here's the front of the book - not dated, but from the style, I'm guessing 1910s?)

Since it is falling apart, I bought it with the idea  that it would be okay to cut up the pages. But I couldn't bring myself to cut it, so I photocopy the pages I want and cut out the quotations. 

 The next card started as a blurry photograph of geese. It's dated March 1964. So I added a vintage JFK stamp (he had died 4 months previously), and the quotation from Isaiah: "All flesh is grass."

Next, a 1964 horse, with the same grass quotation.

Buildings cut up and alternated with negatives. 

 Eisenhower, below, is also now grass. The figure in the negative below is my mom in long plaid shorts, lying on the grass, I believe. (She's now 87.)

Next: I had no idea that printing photographs involved pure artesian water. So this portion of the mailer seemed to call for an old sailboat. Note the bargain prices. 

 Quotation, plus someone sledding down a hill. The figure is probably my brother.

 Woven negatives, prints, and mailer.

Decades pass. The next mailer and photo is from the 70s or 80s. That's my glamourous mom. Prices have risen.

If nothing else, these ATCs are a reminder of how challenging and labor-intensive developing photographs used to be.

Next week: The extraordinary ATCs I received in exhange from very talented and creative people!

Some earlier postings:

• Quilted Chanukah ATCs
• Quilted ATCs from Vintage Stuff
• Painted, Button and Bead Embellished ATCs
• Loom/Weaving ATCs
• Artistic Cards Received from Group Members I
• Artistic Cards Received from Group Members, II

MY Latest ATC (Artist Trading Card) Haul

ATC's are addictive little works of art that anyone from age 2 to 102 can enjoy making. They measure 2 1/2" - 3 1/2". In our last installment, I showed you the fiber Artist Trading Cards I made from mostly vintage neckties, jeans, and an upholstery sample book. 

Now I'll show you the cards I traded them for. My ATC group is a group of incredible, kind, generous, and talented people, artistically, professionally, and personally. 

Jason Ashimoto reported that he is playing around with a woodburning tool. He used it to sketch out this exquisite, ethereal tree, and painted in the colors. 

Jenny Goto makes art using Japanese mineral pigments. This dreamlike haze features flecks of shiny gold, the little specks of which unfortunately didn't show up well in the picture. It's like a heavenly cloud.

John Tallacksen is an astonishingly gifted young artist and printmaker who devotes his professional time to helping underprivileged youth. This is one of his tributes to pioneering printmaker Charles White. It's a pencil sketch. 

See more of John's intense work on his Facebook page, or at JohnTallacksen.com.  He will participate in a group show on March 18, 2014, in the Pacific Design Center in Los Angeles.

John T. Watson's packs a lot of social commentary into a small space. The title of this one is "Purse Snatchers." It reminds me of driving across California freeways - mall after mall, the same eight stores in every community. Fortunately, one of them is a Jo-Ann Fabric. (I'm an anti-materialist, except when it comes to material.)

My friend Marian loves to work in collage. This is a hymn cut from an actual book, and the face is done with packing tape transfer (Simple tutorial.) I love the balance and the intensity. 

The frustrating/great thing about packing tape transfer is that it misses some spots, often for a wonderfully aged effect (and occasionally, of course, the inevitable failures, on the way to success.)

So that's my haul. I lucked out, don't you think? Every one of them is a mini-masterpiece. If you want to see what these same artists made for our last exchange, go here.  

Exchanging ATCs is a wonderful experience, especially if it's done in person. If you're interested in exchanging ATCs, in real meetings, or onoline, here are some suggestions:

• Ask at your local art, craft, and/or scrapbooking store.
• Go to http://www.atcsforall.com/. There are loads of online challenges, contests, etc. 
• For in-person swaps, check Meetup, at http://artisttradingcards.meetup.com/. Type in your zip code and see what's nearby. 
•  Go to groups.yahoo.com/ and type "Artist Trading Cards" in the search window. Some groups trade through the mail; others arrange face-to-face meetings in specific cities.
•  Check out another list of local exchanges at Artist-trading-cards.ch/events.html. 

Interactive Woven Scrap Artist Trading Cards

I have lucked into a lovely and diverse group of eight or so Artist Trading Card (ATC) swappers. We're from completely different walks of life, ages, religions, and everything else. What we have in common is a love of art. The others are into drawing, painting and collage, and I'm the only fiber artist. A couple of months ago, I wrote about the ATC's I made for our first swap, here.

For our July swap, I got the idea in my head to turn my ATCs into looms. I think I got the idea because at a recent estate sale, I scored a cute little vintage flower loom (sort of like this.) I have several tiny looms from the 1950s-1970s - the manufacturers encouraged women to make lots and lots of little squares (or flowers) and then stitch them together into, say, a formal suit to wear during air travel (with white gloves).

So, for my ATCs, I started with sturdy cereal box cardboard. I adhered decorative paper to the plain side, or I painted the plain side. Once the glue/paint dried, I cut evenly spaced slits on the short ends, a quarter inch or so apart. Using the slits, I wrapped an interesting vintage gold yarn to serve as "warp."

Next, I wove with whatever fiber struck my fancy as the weft. For someone like myself, whose favorite childhood toy was a potholder loom, weaving is pure, unmitigated bliss. The only difference between weaving potholders in the 1960s and scraps in the 2010s is that the former were more disciplined. On my contemporary looms, I went for variety.

For example, from top down, this one includes: brussels sprout fabric scraps from a recent potholder; purple organza; three kinds of novelty yarn (eyelash, chenille, and indescribable); more organza, tiny lavender rick rack, and the same vintage gold thread.

Plus a metal button. I liked how the grid of the threads meshed with the nutritional information grid behind it. 

Similarly, this card had text visible on the front, including the words "benefits unique to each."

This one featured a vintage rayon floral, on top. I though it was quite feminine.

Some seemed more masculine. This one involved a cashmere yarn (top), a sliver of denim jeans (plus a novelty button with a grid); striped canvas ticking scrap; colorful novelty yarn; black cotton selvage topped with blue-painted rick rack; gold yarn, and blue ribbon yarn:

Here, I applied a little discipline, limiting myself to two yarns for weft (plus a little gold at the bottom). The photo doesn't convey the lovely mint color of the vintage button.

 Fuzzy cashmere and sari yarn went into this one, plus some blue tulle scraps:

I made one card with the slits cut in the other direction. It wound up looking like a landscape:

(This one looked a little plain to me, so after this photo, I later added a shiny mother of pearl button on the upper right. Big improvement.)

Now here's what I like best about these cards, aside from the fact that they use up approximately 3 ounces of my 80 gazillion ton scrap stash: They're fully interactive! On the back of the card, I invited the recipients to weave their OWN tapestries!

One of the rules of our exchange is that we put our cards in some kind of envelope before swapping, which makes the anticipation even more fun. I wrapped mine in a slice from an old calender, with the grid on the outside, and a nature scene that I felt went well with that card's fibers. 

I tied each package with a variety of interesting yarns, cords, and fabric scraps, so the recipient could use them to weave their side:  

Now here's where an in person ATC exchange is sooooooooo much better than doing it through  cyberspace and mail.  First, you get to ask other artists about their work on the spot. And second, you get useful reality-based feedback on yours!

One of the young women immediately began weaving the back of her card with the wrapping fibers! I was so incredibly proud!

And one of the fellows immediately placed his card into my envelope to create a stand.

He thought I made it that way on purpose! But I didn't! He's a total genius, and I'm reaping the benefits! 

If you're interested in joining the international Artist Trading Card movement, go to Groups.yahoo.com/ and type in "Artist Trading Cards." You'll find many groups - some trade through the mail; others arrange face-to-face meetings in specific cities. There are also lists of local exchanges at Artist-trading-cards.ch/events.html.

And if you make a woven card, I'd love to see it!