The Newest Art Card Is Serenity

Card, side 1

Card, side 2

During the Trump presidency discord, bad behavior and incivility have reached fever pitch though as a culture we have been trending in that direction for decades. I believe with great certainty that unless many of us act individually to counteract the cultural and social trend our democracy is doomed to go down in social and political anarchy. Because of that belief I began making the Art Cards as my individual effort to affect change in 2013. I design the cards and have them printed in batches of 250 each so that I can give them to random persons, sometimes face to face, other times anonymously. I also put them in public spaces where they can be picked up or ignored. I am not making the cards to be revolutionary because that would be foolish. I don’t show them in the traditional style of the Art World, for sale in art galleries. Instead they are meant to be gifts made to others. I know that the vast majority of the cards end up lost or trashed and I also know that this effort does little or nothing to cause change. But, I hope that the gift of these cards might inspire a few people here and there over time to join in the effort to create peace, love, joy, harmony, and serenity through their own kind efforts toward others. At the same time I understand my hope to be a Metamodern trope that goes just a touch beyond postmodern irony. *

I titled the two sides of the card side 1 and side 2 because neither side takes priority over the other. One is based on a photograph I took in 2010. The other is also photographic, but I took the photo of a section of sky in one of the seascape pastels I've created during the past 20 years. The typography, orange and yellow colors added to the pastel image, and photos of the birds are used to establish unity between the two sides of the card. In fact I have used more photography in this card than in each of the other five cards, and I'm pleased with the result.

Note

• Art during the 20th and 21st century is thought by artists, theorist and art critics to fit into three periods, modern, postmodern and metamodern. Metamodern is the most recent of these and readers can discover something about it at the following location, http://www.metamodernism.com/.