Some people collect stamps or coins, others collect trading cards with famous football or hockey players. Few people know about art trading cards. Usually they are of the size of regular trading cards, but they are self-made. Artists are free to use any techniques, media and materials to create cards which they swap. There should be name, date and place on a card. One can swap his own cards on a special events or find some sites that help to look for activists from all over the world.
The movement began in 1997 by a Swiss artist M. Vanci Stirnemann. He created 1200 cards as a part of an exhibition. On the closing date of the exhibition he offered visitors to create their own cards to swap with him. It was a start for the whole new movement.
Once, I ran into invitation on the Internet to participate in such a swap. Our art club did the cards and they went to the USA. Our swap partner was half of the globe away - Lafayette High School from St. Louis. All our artist were very excited to participate in this project. Somebody even didn't believe that the cards will actually make it all the way to the United States. The topic was nature. We sent the cards and were waiting for the reply.
Meghan O’Donnell from St. Louis sent us the picture. We can see our own works on the display there. Thank you very much! It looks so great!
And one more thing to say. The cards from the USA are actually in school already! They came on Wednesday last week, but since the art club had been cancelled that week because of the Easter holidays, the envelope stayed there, still unopened! It was very hard to fight the temptation! We are going to open it together with art club students this Thursday!
Thanks to everybody who participated in this activity some way or another!
