Postcards from Anywhere provides a plethora of opportunities for the new year
As most of us are homebound for the foreseeable future, there is hardly any place we may visit that could be considered picturesque or something that would be featured on a traditional postcard.
A postcard typically features a photo of impossibly breathtaking coasts or colourful, lively skylines that one would send family or friends from their vacation. However, thanks to projects such as Trisha Lavoie’s Postcards from Anywhere, new opportunities abound, including the chance to rediscover our local communities.
Growing up, photography and mail were important pieces of Lavoie’s life. Her father also enjoyed photography, always encouraging Lavoie to take photos. As a teenager, she was drawn to what she described as boring postcards, depicting scenes such as empty restaurants or turnpikes and started collecting them.
“I've always had a small divergent interest in photography, even though it's not the primary artistic medium that I participate in. But I've also had a wide interest in different forms of visual representation art and mail art and things like that. And correspondence has always been a really big part of my life. I'm someone who grew up with pen pals, some of whom I'm still friends with to this day. So I guess that all boils down to how this project started to germinate in my mind,” said Lavoie.
"I've always had a small divergent interest in photography, even though it's not the primary artistic medium that I participate in. But I've also had a wide interest in different forms of visual representation art and mail art and things like that. And correspondence has always been a really big part of my life."
When the pandemic started, many artist-run centres and galleries where Lavoie showcased her art were closed. The artist started to search for something different that she could do. This desire to do something new, combined with her love of boring postcards, seemed especially fitting during this time when we’re not only unable to travel but are also missing our loved ones dearly.
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“It's basically a subscription service where for the next 12 months of the year you will receive boring photographic images or boring postcards, however you want to describe them, done by different artists from different parts of Canada,” explained Lavoie.
There is a small fee associated with the service to help offset the costs of printing but also because it was important to Lavoie to be able to compensate the contributing artists for their work.
Like Lavoie, many of the artists who have contributed work to the project are not traditionally photographers either. Lavoie wanted to encourage others — artists and postcard recipients alike — to try new things but also to take another look at their world. To that end, she hopes that this will be an opportunity for individuals to discover new artists in a time when it’s not possible to do so in the typical fashion.
Lavoie wanted to encourage others — artists and postcard recipients alike — to try new things but also to take another look at their world. To that end, she hopes that this will be an opportunity for individuals to discover new artists in a time when it’s not possible to do so in the typical fashion.
“I hope it just brings a little bit of delight to their day . . . I hope that somebody might take a look at [the images] and kind of have a bit of a laugh. [A]lso in the case of people who are being sent cards by other people, it gives them a little moment of joy to get a piece of mail from someone they love,” said Lavoie.
For Lavoie, writing postcards has also been a bit of a therapeutic practice, helping her to stay connected with friends and family during the past few months.
“There's something kind of weirdly therapeutic for me to just sit down and force myself to just write a letter or write a postcard to someone. You're thinking about that person and you're thinking about what you're going to write to them, even if it's just for a small period of time and you're not distracted by other things. [F]or me, you want to try to make it witty, you want to try to make it a little funny, you want it to be entertaining . . . it forces you to just step back, I think and do that,” explained Lavoie.
"There's something kind of weirdly therapeutic for me to just sit down and force myself to just write a letter or write a postcard to someone."
Many appear to feel the same as her, with a number of individuals purchasing the postcards as a gift to loved ones, near and far. Lavoie has found the positive reception a very uplifting part of the project.
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Initially, Lavoie had planned for Postcards from Anywhere to span only the year, but she did also mention that depending on if she continues to receive artist contributions and if there is still interest, she might consider continuing it.
Either way, as we move forward into this new year, projects like Postcards from Anywhere provide us with much-needed opportunities to reconnect with our local communities, learn about new artists and connect with loved ones.
Miranda Babbitt
Assistant LifeStyle Editor
The art of letter writing is one that I have rarely tried to perfect, despite the instinctive happy dance that reverberates through my body once I grasp the envelope addressed to me. Perhaps this reaction seems excessive, yet every letter that has waited for me in my mailbox has been greeted with near hysteria. But it’s on a more somber note that I must admit this hysteria is mostly a result of the rarity of receiving one at all.
This honesty should grant me no mercy, as I still haven’t managed to deliver the happiness of receiving a letter to someone else. In other words, I don’t really send letters at all. And for the most part, my excuse in avoiding such a beautiful habit is one of undeniable laziness. Sending a GIF of a clip from Parks & Recreation or just a chubby kitty with an oh-so-powerful message to a far off friend is so much more tempting when I’ve just collapsed onto my bed and my procrastination coma is beginning to set in.
This procrastination coma, or shall I say the “suffocating lazy blanket” to avoid any morbidity, is a pressing issue. In fact, it’s nearly an epidemic for those of our age. We see the screen in front of us, and it’s lit up with shortcuts intended to make our life easier. The convenience of technology is inevitably tempting for a large majority of everyday activities – whether that’s looking up a last nagging homework answer, or the hours of Starbucks to make sure you can walk home with a red holiday cup, but the harrowing part of this convenience is that we’ve thrown our relationships into the mix.
We’re offered endless ways to merely scratch the surface of reaching any depth in a relationship. The ease of “liking” a photo or shooting a quick one-word message to a friend from home is the basis of most relationships sustained through Facebook. Social media outlets can make it seem as though maintaining relationships is easy, but this isn’t the case for any that we value. When someone is valued, they deserve effort, and this is not achieved by lumping them together with checking the hours of Starbucks.
An emoji in replacement of a string of explanatory sentences doesn’t help us foster the connections we have with those we value. It cheapens it. It seems to me that traditional communication, be it a phone call, a face-to-face conversation, or even letters are undervalued for the sake of convenience. And yet, I know I’m not alone when I say that effort does not go unnoticed. It’s a neon indication in an otherwise grey realm of technological methods.
A letter, for example, can succinctly demonstrate this effort. For the collection I have received over the past few years, they have instantly communicated to me so much more than the words enclosed inside. They carry a sentimental value that is no longer a part of how we communicate.
And letters have no specified audience either. They don’t just need to be for your family at home, or a friend from high school, or anyone who is literally far enough away from you that a letter would be expected. They can be the cutest pick-me-up for someone who has just had a rough week and the most intimate way to enclose some news about your life to a friend you just don’t get to see enough.
The happy dance that comes with a letter isn’t solely reserved for the recipient either. There is something so inherently satisfying with sending a letter nowadays, perhaps because it is as rare as I made it out to be in my own life. Going out to the store, buying some cheerful envelopes, a vintage postage stamp, and stickers to be sprinkled throughout the message has such a novel appeal to it. We can see the products of our efforts, package them away, and send them across the city, or world, and know that this will be held in the excited hands of someone we love.
Come the holidays, when your cheapest generic cialis own group of friends scatters in every direction as they make their way home, why not experiment with a letter or two. Even if it’s a funny story about the ugly Christmas sweater waiting for you on your bed, the message behind the cringe-inducing tale won’t be forgotten.
