Mail Projects
Since 2016, I've made my Christmas cards into a mail art project. The point of each set of Christmas cards is that they are a complete piece of work in and of themselves, and that every person who receives a card receives a fragment of the complete artwork. Usually, the final piece is connected by a mathematical rule related to the number of people receiving the cards but I’ve also used other rules and systems to connect the cards.
Theoretically, the project could only be whole if everyone who had a fragment of it got together and pieced it back together again (of course, this isn't possible because some people haven't kept their cards, and some cards never arrived).
I like the idea of using images as a means of expressing community. These projects are an expression of the community I see around me at the end of every year. The final image describes that group (abstractly) and my connection to them.
2016 Houses (48)
Each card set of 24 cards expressed all possible permutations of the four elements in the image.
2017 Bell Numbers (52)
2018 Catalan Numbers (64)
2019 Knight’s Tour (64)
Each card represented a square in the knights tour of a chessboard. The knight’s tour is a sequence of moves that allows the piece to touch every square on the board.
2020 Birthday Party
2020 Corners (No idea how many)
2021 Dinner Table Permutations
2022 Suns (70)
2023 Tree/Map (52)
The image on each card was a square on the map.
2024 Cosmic Eggs (65)