Dear 33020: Lead by Margaret Roleke

The Art and Culture Center/ Hollywood, FL and Artspace New Haven, CT will dedicate their windows to a slowly unfolding postcard correspondence between Connecticut based artist, Margaret Roleke, and Florida based artist, Lisa Rockford. As correspondence comes in, Center’s Curator Laura Marsh and Artspace’s Curator, Sarah Fritchey, will add each postcard to a grid that will eventually fill up to contain one image that reflects the current political climate. These artists are strangers, but both participated in mass demonstrations following the 2017 Presidential Inauguration. The curators are colleagues and have worked together for 7-years, who now work together to serve as bridges between communities.

Postcards are unique in the openness of their handmade designs. While each postcard will measure 5×7 inches, Roleke and Lisa Rockford must decide how much information to communicate via image or text. They must also decide if they want to address a primary audience or multiple audiences, which could range from one another, to the post office workers who carry their cards, to the audiences in New Haven and Florida. The project will come to a close on the 101st day of the new administration’s time in office. At this point, the grid may reveal a unified larger image that can be read as a whole.

This exhibition explores how we can communicate across time, geographies, professional boundaries and political differences. The cards will be passed between many hands across 1,350 miles of terrain. The production route starts in a private studio, enters the U.S. Postal Service (a government service), and lands in exhibition spaces that are unfamiliar to each artist. Each individual who touches them may take on the role of co-producer, collaborator, or audience member.

The project is bound to and based in the potential of friendship, new and old, to maintain contact through distance, an act that requires maintenance, cultivation and mutual care. It was conceived as a partnership between Laura Marsh and Sarah Fritchey. Marsh and Fritchey will continue this coast-to-coast partnership in the year ahead, experimenting with ways to introduce local audiences to artists working in different parts of the country.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website