An Invitation to Notice
Connecting is on your calendar
12 postcards you'll love to give away
An Invitation to Notice is 12 postcards disguised as a desk calendar. At the end of each month cut off the calendar section and send the postcard to someone you care about. Each month is a different image that was captured through Camera Illumina, an immersive art work that creates intimacy with the land through observation and sensory experience.
An invitation to send a monthly postcard
I love getting mail. It goes back to receiving postcards and letters from my dad and family in Switzerland when I was a child. My Dad was an epic postcard sender and sent hundreds over the course of his life. We didn’t get to live close to each other and he used postcards to help bridge the gap. Reading them now I see them as an act of his love.
My Dad loved photography and even did some super 8 filming. He also loved trains!
I also love sending mail. There is something deeply satisfying about writing a little note to connect with a person you care for. It also feels a little counter cultural to send mail these days and I'm always up for a little cultural rebellion.
'At Home Open Studio' mail art project, 2021
The Digital Guestbook
Sign the digital guestbook and share your cards journey, I’d love to know where it found you, or where you sent it!
Fill out this form and we will update the interactive map with your info!
Camera Illumina
Camera Illumina is an exploration of what it means to live in a reciprocal relationship with the land. I first encountered this notion in the book Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by the Potowatami botanist Robin Wall Kimmerer. She describes a way of being that is “rooted in intimacy with a local landscape where the land itself is the teacher”. Reading this made me rethink my relationship to my home, the ancestral land of the Stó:lō people.
As a settler artist I am trying to create a deeper relationship to where I live and unlearn my colonial view of ‘nature’ as separate from me.
The first camera obscura I made out of cardboard and duct tape.
How did I capture the images?
I used a digital camera or a phone inside the Camera Illumina to capture the image.
How does Camera Illumina work?
The technology of the camera obscura (meaning dark chamber) dates back to 4th century China. The basic structure of this type of camera is a dark room with a little hole in the wall; the light rays from the outside enter through the tiny hole and project the view upside down onto an interior wall. Adding a lens over top of the hole sharpens the image and using a mirror projects the image down onto a table as the illustration shows. This ancient concept was further developed over many centuries and was used by painters, mathematicians and scientists. I am grateful for the sharing of this knowledge, a creative inheritance that we can all participate in.
