POSTCARD ART: Ninth Posting

Art, art postcards, experimental, in the studio, painting, printmaking February 27, 2023

Continuing my POSTCARD series of blogs with another post profiling the design and production of the art postcards that I have been designing and printing for more than a decade. (See links to some of the previous POSTCARD posts below). On this occasion I am continuing my retrospective look back at some cards I have made in the past, this time going right back to the beginning of the design and production of them in 2006 and 2007. Some of my other POSTCARD posts feature batches from subsequent years. An example of these is contained in the final photos of grouped cards in this post, in gallery exhibition mode. My postcard design project was initially inspired by a trip to Japan to study of some traditional Modernist printmaking approaches that had taken place there. My cards were produced by hand in limited edition batches with no two cards being exactly alike. The composite elements of each print, both background and overlaid elements meant that each card is unique, similar to the others but not one of an identical batch, more of an approximate match.

This is one of the earliest examples, from the series of Abstract Art Postcards designed in 2007. (Photo and artwork-©2007 Dr. Michael Hill).

…and the second one, also 2007, from the same series of Abstract Art Postcards. (Photo and artwork-©2007 Dr. Michael Hill).

…and the third one, also 2007, from the same series of Abstract Art Postcards. (Photo and artwork-©2007 Dr. Michael Hill).

Abstract Nos. 1-11, an exhibition of my Postcard Art at the University Technology, Sydney in 2007. (Photo and artwork-©2007 Dr. Michael Hill).
On the opening night of the exhibition with Cosmo Arai and her Mexican colleague from the Japan Foundation in Sydney that I had been involved with on Japanese culture projects both in Australia and Japan. (Photo and artwork-©2007 Dr. Michael Hill).
A closer shot of the gallery window display that was illuminated on a 24 hour/7 days a week basis. Note that despite the postcards being displayed in groupings, the cards in each group are not identical. They are basically similar but not part of an identical set, as mentioned above. This is due to my variations in the printmaking stage where some elements were printed separately and not always in the exact same position on each card. These cards were not printed from a single set block but cumulatively from several separate blocks and single elements. The result is that they all look similar and part of a set but in terms of the positioning of the graphic elements and the intensity of colour and texture no two are identical…it may seem to some to be a bit of a stretch to call them mono prints but that is essentially what they are. (Photo and artwork-©2007 Dr. Michael Hill).
Nine of my art postcards from the earliest batches of my printmaking on sale a few years later at the Gauge Gallery in Glebe. (Photo and artwork-©2012 Dr. Michael Hill).
Subsequent batches, produced up to a decade later, show an increased diversity in design and number of batches of cards. Once I started making art postcards it became part of my graphic art and design expression…and I am still making them in 2023! I am also prepared to play swapsies, so if you would like one of mine I shall swap it for one of yours i.e. a limited edition art postcard that you have made by hand. To arrange a swap you can message me at: doctorcomics@gmail.com (Photo and artwork-©2018 Dr. Michael Hill).
Front and rear view of the invitation to my Postcard Art show back in the day. (Photo and artwork-©2007 Dr. Michael Hill)

   

   

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Creator and former Director of the Master of Animation course at the University of Technology, Sydney, Dr. Michael Hill has a Master's degree in animation and a PhD in comics studies, prompting his introduction on ABC Radio as “Doctor Comics”. A member of the editorial board of the International Journal of Comic Art, and former member of the Comics Grid Journal of Comics Scholarship and the Advisory Committee of the Q-Collection Comic Book Preservation Project, he has delivered public lectures on Comics, Anime and Manga and held academic directorships in Interdisciplinary Studies, Animation, Design and Visual Communication. Having donated his collection of research materials on Australian alternative comics to the National Library of Australia he is now active in the artistic domain, writing, drawing and printmaking, creating art postcards and prints and his own graphic novel Blotting Paper: The Recollected Graphical Impressions of Doctor Comics.

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