Postcardist

I had the good fortune to talk with Dr. Stephen Hughes from the Department of Anthropology and Sociology, SOAS, University of London. He and Emily Stevenson curated an exhibit of postcards in an exhibit titled, From Madras to Bangalore: Picture Postcards as Urban History of Colonial India. Here's what the exhibit is:

This exhibition covers a selection of picture postcards from the Indian cities of Chennai and Bengaluru between 1900 and the 1930s; then known as Madras and Bangalore. They were the two most important colonial cities in British south India. By pairing these together, this exhibition tells a tale of how these two cities, although separated by 215 miles, were linked through a set of common representational and material practices. The exhibit explores how postcard practices imagined, figured and performed a colonial encounter by depicting cities' monuments, street, people and places.

In the early decades of the 20th century, postcards were at the height of their popularity. They were an innovative and affordable form of communicating. It has been estimated that in Britain alone approximately six billion postcards passed through the postal system between 1902 and 1910.

You can follow the exhibit on Instagram: soaspostcard

The exhibit is open until September 23, 2018, Tuesday-Sunday 10:30am to 5:00 PM, Thursdays late opening till 8pm.

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Music in the episode is Japanese Prog by Rushus and is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License.

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Which came first, the stamp or the postcard? In this episode, host Frank Roche interviews stamp collector and paper artist, Russ Romano, who creates postcard experiences by creating postcard/stamp intersections.

So much ground is covered in this show. Russ rode a train across the United States and sent postcards to a penpal in Spain. He's journaled every single day since he was 10. And he has a system to design postcard experiences.

Shows and people we refer to in this episode:

Chloe McHenry (@ParcelTongue) in E11: Mail Art

Kitty in E28: Postcards from the Edge

Lillian Karabaic in E27: Postcards from the Trans-Siberian Railway

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Music in the episode is Japanese Prog by Rushus and is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License.

Get The Postcardist Podcast for free: Apple Podcasts | Android | Stitcher | TuneIn

Frank Roche is joined by illustrator Jack McKean, whose Instagram site, Postcards to My Brother, documents his quotidian activities with drawings on postcards. Jack talks about his inspiration for the project, how he's kept going daily for more than a year and a half, and where he gets creative energy.

The key question in this episode: How do you define the front and back of a postcard? It's not an existential question. If you're an illustrator and draw on the "back," does that make the back the front?

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Music in the episode is Japanese Prog by Rushus and is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License.

Get The Postcardist Podcast for free: Apple Podcasts | Android | Stitcher | TuneIn

In this episode, I continue my talk with Kitty, the creator and curator of Postcards from the Edge, an Instagram community built on a simple idea: send-receive-connect. And, of course, they do it with postcards. In this episode we we talk about the possibility of a postcard meetup; visiting Mexico City; and the photographers Jen Dagley, 3Z Moon, and Rachel Nyssen.

Kitty built huge IG communities that feature curated content, including UrbanRomantix and ArkiRomatix. And now she's doing the same at Postcards from the Edge, along with her collaborators Gitti, Jess, Elaine and Josh, all of whom are terrific photographers and creatives, as well as being super interactive administrators of PftE. (And now, there's a Postcards from the Edge group on Facebook.)

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Music in the episode is Japanese Prog by Rushus and is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License.

Get The Postcardist Podcast for free: Apple Podcasts | Android | Stitcher | TuneIn

What happens when a person who creates highly engaged artistic communities gets on the phone with a guy who makes podcasts about postcards? I'll give you a hint -- it's not a short conversation.

In this episode, I talk to Kitty, the creator and curator of Postcards from the Edge, an Instagram community built on a simple idea: send-receive-connect. And, of course, they do it with postcards.

Kitty built huge IG communities that feature curated content, including UrbanRomantix and ArkiRomatix. And now she's doing the same at Postcards from the Edge, along with her collaborators Gitti, Jess and Josh, all of whom are terrific photographers and creatives, as well as being super interactive administrators of PftE. (And now, there's a Postcards from the Edge group on Facebook.)

In a disconnected and social media heavy world, we're all looking for more of a connection. And if you're into authenticity, this is your show. In addition to the long conversation Kitty and I had about postcards, we also talk about creative enterprises and the splendor of Silver City, New Mexico. Wondering about items and places we talk about? Here are some links:

Power and Light Press

Syzygy Tile

Lantern Press Postcards

And coming up in Part 2, we talk about the possibility of a postcard meetup; visiting Mexico City; and the photographers Jen Dagley, 3Z Moon, and Rachel Nyssen.

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Music in the episode is Japanese Prog by Rushus and is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License.

Get The Postcardist Podcast for free: Apple Podcasts | Android | Stitcher | TuneIn

Ziggy Stardust and I are talking about postcards.

Okay, it's not Ziggy, but it's a striking likeness. I'm in Philadelphia with author, financial consultant and highly acclaimed podcaster, Lillian Carabaic. We're talking about postcards; and she's turning heads.

We're sitting in the speaker's lounge at Podcast Movement. Lillian just finished giving her talk -- Breaking Through Creative Blocks Like Bowie -- to 100+ podcasters in the most dynamic presentation of the four-day conference. She's dressed in an asymmetrical blue spandex bodysuit festooned with lightning bolts. She's sporting a magenta wig. Loads of blue eye shadow. And she's perched atop iridescent six-inch platform boots. Perched might not be the right word -- Lillian/Ziggy demonstrated an overhead kick while onstage in those tall boots. You see, she was once a competitive figure skater.

We met a couple days earlier in a keynote session. What were the odds that I got to sit near a storyteller who sent hundreds of geo-tagged postcards that she wrote on the Trans-Siberian Railway? And that we would start talking about postcards at all considering it's a conference about podcasting? Oh, the odds. Must be like 2,500 to 1. (87.6% of statistics are made up on the spot.)

I wrote 273 postcards on the train as we crossed Siberia and Mongolia. And I geo-tagged them all.

Lillian and I talk about her travel from Dublin, Ireland to Holyhead, Wales on the ferry. Then on a train to Berlin. And Moscow. And on the Trans-Siberian Railway and Trans-Mongolian Railway to Beijing. And then one more train to Shanghai. (I wonder if she was listening to China Girl when her train rattled into The Land of the Red Dragon.) All the while writing postcards and geo-tagging every one of her postcards that she sent to fans who were following her journey.

Lillian is super high energy and so much fun. She's interesting. And she writes postcards. With glitter.

You can order Lillian's book, Get Your Money Together: Your Purr-fect Finance Book, here.

Her radio show and podcast, Oh My Dollar!, can be found here.

And you can hire her to give talks and courses about financial planning by clicking here.

Music in the episode is Japanese Prog by Rushus and is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License.

Get The Postcardist Podcast for free: Apple Podcasts | Android | Stitcher | TuneIn

In this episode, I talk with aesthete, word traveler, and LA Woman, Shannon McCormick, about the coolest postcard shop in Los Angeles, how she displays her postcard collection, and some ideas about custom postcards we could create.

Links to things we talk about:

Soap Plant + Wacko

Griffith Observatory

Postcard Racks

Scuffing on Postcards

Hotel Jagua -- Cienfuegos, Cuba

Podcast Movement 2018

Music in the episode is Japanese Prog by Rushus and is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License.

Instagram is the the postcard of this time. That's what Professor John Murphy said to me as we talked about the intersection of postcards and the digital world. John teaches in the Digital Media & Design school at the University of Connecticut.

We talk about how postcards fit into an instant gratification world, the collection of postcards his father sent his mother on his travels around the world in the military, and how postcards work to connect us in a hyper-connected world.

Music in the episode is Japanese Prog by Rushus and is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License.

What does pinhole photography have to do with postcards? A lot when the talented photographer, Moni Smith, join me to talk about the art of pinhole photography and her monthly photography postcard swap.

This show is part of the continuing series on The Postcardist Podcast featuring creatives and artists who participate in and advance the sharing of postcards.

Items referenced in this show:

Moni Smith's Postcard Swap

Moni Smith on Instagram

Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day

Elfster

How to Play the Banjo

Music in the episode is Japanese Prog by Rushus and is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives (aka Music Sharing) 3.0 International License.

A pile of postcards here. A stack of postcards there. A wax seal. A rubber stamp. Postage stamps. And boxes upon boxes upon boxes of postcards.

Ever wonder what it's like to live in a house with a postcard guy? Namely...me? I this episode, you find out. My wife, Sheryl, joins me to about how a Christmas gift turned into a podcast; about putting a postcard writing station in our formal living room; and about how postcards are a part of daily life Chez Postcardist. Plus, we talk about the magic of Episode 23.

I hope you enjoy it as much as I did making it. And if you listen to the show long enough you'll hear why I titled this show what I did.