Artist Trading Cards--my current passion channel for exploring form, color, relationship between word and image, design--are restricted to a 2.5 inch by 3.5 inch surface built on paper, cardboard, canvas, metal, cloth, or whatever material will travel safely, stiffly, legally through international mail.
I am not primarily a visual artist. I have come to it from my practice of poetry and writing, and bring no expectations for making a living from it, showing in a gallery, or doing anything other than having fun, and perhaps sharing/swapping with others.
It's art-in-miniature or "miniature art" as my friend Sara describes it. (I recently turned her on to the ATC phenom and she has bit: hook, line and sinker.) You can collage, paint, draw with watercolor pencils (my latest, favorite tool), watercolor, sew, punch tin, or do so many other things to create these little pleasures that are then traded, one-on-one, or swapped (3 or 6 at a time in a group "hosted" by someone who swaps out the same number as you have traded into the group). Kind of like having pen pals, only these folks do incredible things with art.
In a culture that values everything LARGE, especially out here in the American west, this art form instead values teensy. It fits my nature, as when I first went to Europe and realized streets, cars, buildings could be so much more pleasant when downsized from the American model.
We may like our wide open spaces historically, but Americans have a propensity of filling them up with BIG things, like automobiles, Stetson hats, skyscrapers, dams, and, finally, junk yards--something we see all too often out here on the plain/deserts. As the world gets smaller, and more interdependent with our resources, scaling down may be just the goal for us westerners. It wouldn't hurt us to go on a diet--might even leave us with a new renewable energy, a cleaner brain and body and more to share with others.
