In one of my recent posts I documented my experience with the risograph, and at the bottom of the post I wrote that I’ll be giving away 5 pieces of the poster to anyone who deemed it worthy. Honestly I wrote that thinking no one would respond, but I thought it would be a nice experiment anyway.
Surprisingly someone responded almost right away, and more trickled in over the next few days. I had to figure out how to send an A3 poster – I thought I’ll send them in postal tubes but my partner reminded me that the risograph ink may leave marks on the paper if curled, and it may tend to have a memory of being curled. She had a rigid A3 envelope on hand (it is very convenient to live with an artist), so I made sure the post office is able to accept it since they have strict restrictions on dimensions.
I bought plastic sheets to protect the poster, put them into the rigid envelopes, and sent them through registered mail. US, India, Canada and Italy. I thought that was pretty cool, to distribute them to different geographical locations.
I felt like I had a taste of what it is like to be an artist. The wonder of having someone appreciating your art, so much that they are willing to place it somewhere in the intimacy of their homes. Yes, I am giving them away for free, but somehow it seems unbelievable still that someone out there would like to have them.
That I channeled a part of me out into a physical media, and reproduced them into prints, and now they are floating somewhere out there on some postal route. One day, hopefully they will reach their eventual homes. This seems like a miracle that this is even possible – imagine living a couple of hundred years back, how difficult would it be to accomplish this?
Thanks to those who took the effort to request a poster, I am in your gratitude. Maybe it seems weird to have this gratitude because I am the giver – I don’t know how to articulate this accurately, but I lived a life feeling so much alienation and rejection, the fact that some stranger out there wants my art is difficult for me to fathom.
I cannot objectively appreciate something I’ve worked on, so to have people visibly appreciate it for me is truly a gift.
I still have one copy left if anyone’s interested!