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It occurred to me after posting my new Artist Trading Cards (ATCs) that not everyone knows what they are! So here’s an ATC primer (courtesy of the official site) for anyone seeking fun, collaborative, democratic, community-based creative practices:
- ATCs are miniature works of art created on 2 ½ X 3 ½ inch or 64 X 89 mm card stock;
- they are originals, small editions and, most importantly, self-produced. Anybody can produce them;
- the idea is that you trade them with other people who produce cards, either at trading sessions or wherever you meet another ATC trader in person;
- it is important that you meet other people in person to trade – i.e. it is ok to trade by mail or to participate in editions but the main purpose of this performance is the trading session and the personal meeting;
- it’s not about money: participants in trading sessions and editions should not be charged any money: the point of the project is the exchange of cards as well as personal experience;
- there are monthly trading sessions at different places and you can start your own trading session wherever you live;
- the project was initiated in 1997 by zurich artist m.vänçi stirnemann; and was brought to North America the same year by Don Mabie/Chuck Stake.
More ATC goodies:
- Visit the official site, at www.artist-trading-cards.ch
- Check out the Canadian magazine ATC Quarterly at www.atcquarterly.com
- Look at more of my ATCs at www.goodgirl.ca/atc.html
Some recent Artist Trading Cards I made:
Says he: “I wouldn’t trade places with anyone.”
In our hearts there was more.
Man in an orange sweater
So I says to the guy…
Life often leads in directions that can never, ever be foreseen. And so this finds me, unexpectedly and to stay, in Regina, Saskatchewan. Regina wasn’t just low on my list of potential cities to move to…it didn’t make the list at all. This small cold city is a tough sell, even to a self-proclaimed prairie girl like myself who doesn’t need to have the beauty of flat and rolling places explained.
Most would argue that Regina’s romance flies completely under the radar because it simply doesn’t exist. And yet, when I recently found myself facing the daunting prospect of choosing a new place to live, Regina came a-knockin’. What started as a CV sent on a whim was followed by an interview with a small social justice magazine based in the Saskatchewan capital. My childhood memories of Regina were of family visits to sprawling, colourless suburbs, and I haughtily assumed that a visit to the city would confirm my disinterest: obviously once I arrived in Regina it would be completely apparent that I could never live there.
Expecting nothing more, I was confused when I arrived in a tree-filled downtown core of walkable residential communities with charming heritage homes. Twenty-four hours later, I left Regina stunned to realize that I was considering the possibility of moving there whether I landed the job or not. An Albertan by birth and upbringing but not by nature, it occurred to me that maybe I’d accidentally been born in the wrong prairie province; that moving a little to the right on the map (and a lot to the left on the political spectrum) might ultimately take me home. Barely three weeks later and still in shock, I arrived with my cat at the miniature airport, my belongings following close behind on the Greyhound from Montreal.
One week into my new life the seduction is still a bit of a mystery. It certainly has to do in part with place: that sense of belonging that speaks to heart and bones and blood. The prairies simply feel like home, and my heart opens in this wide-open space. My big city identification has always limited me from envisioning myself returning to a small prairie city, but when I arrived I immediately felt the beauty of this place. Reminiscent of the stunted trees that sprinkle this part of the world (human-planted and struggling to survive), Regina is similarly stunted, struggling to survive the cold, cold winters and the province’s dwindling population. There are a million good reasons to leave, and many people do (for example eight of my mother’s nine siblings). But those that stay see something special in this place.
The potential of this rough little city has caught my attention and won’t let go. But there’s also a practical element to the courtship. As a creative person, I will likely always be relatively poor. So why not go to a city where I can afford to do creative work and still scrape together enough savings to eventually become a property owner with a little extra in the bank?
It’s not a new idea. Artists have always migrated to where they can afford to live, using the unformed potential of a place to build culture and community and creativity. It was in this potential that I started to see Regina’s sex appeal: in its slightly dilapidated inner-city communities and up-and-coming warehouse district. Something about it made me imagine how Brooklyn must have felt when the artists became too poor to stay in the gentrified districts of Manhattan and began to cross the bridge.
Creative people go to where it’s affordable to live because they are generally poor, and the romance of the places they choose is not always evident at first. This is because it’s all about potential, not reality. It’s about a vision for something beyond what currently exists. And that is what art and music and cultural production are really about: taking the potential of an idea or a place and manifesting it. Art sees the potential of humanity and fulfills it, and in so doing stretches that potential further by moving on to the next idea, manifestation, neighbourhood, city…
It might sound insane to compare this tiny flat cold prairie city to the Williamsburgs and Mile Ends before they were cool. But perhaps that is the lot of the creative person: first they sound insane, then people start to pay attention to what they’re talking about, and ultimately the whole thing gets appropriated by the masses. Then the creative person must move on to cheaper pastures.
Am I actually suggesting that Regina is the next Williamsburg? Not really. I guess all I’m suggesting is that Regina might turn out to be my Williamsburg…the place where I get to discover the ways that my creative potential might be wrapped up in the creative potential of place and community.
Having said this much I am wary of saying too much more, because I don’t want Regina to catch on too quickly. I want to enjoy at least a couple years here before the boom spreads. I even hope to be able to afford a small house before the Alberta money spreads and affluenza-afflicted Calgarians start itching to invest their oily cash in Southern Saskatchewan real estate. Advertising the potential of this place will only contribute to letting the secret out. But maybe that’s another cross the creative person has to bear: drawing attention to themselves through self-expression and cultural production. If only I could keep my mouth shut, I’d be able to protect this secret. But that’s not what artists do. They open their big mouths and say crazy things and make big paintings and write ludicrous stories, and make a big show of the whole damn thing.
On that note, here are some facts and romantic things to know about in my new city:
- Cathedral District (my neighbourhood, with a sweet little commercial walking street and annual arts festival)
- 13th Avenue Coffee House (a three-minute walk from my house with delectable rice bowls, including the Sushi Bowl with nori, marinated tofu, edamame, cukes and ginger. Hmmmm.)
- 300,000 trees, all planted to make an “oasis” on the prairie. Reginans take their trees pretty seriously.
- Wascana Park. Ok, so I was totally wrong about it being the biggest urban park in the world, but at 2300 acres it is the second biggest municipal park in Canada. (And yes, it’s tons bigger than Central Park, which clocks in at a puny 843 acres!)
- Regina Public Library Repertory Film Theatre and the Saskatchewan Filmpool
- Briarpatch Magazine: obviously I have to plug my new gig.
And if none of that wins you over, then there’s the fact that according to the Daily Show everyone in Regina is gay:
xox n
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