Collecting A Full Deck

The Artsology Essay Series, #4, by Mark McKinney    

I don't remember exactly when it started, but as a kid I was a "collector," and I had a lot of collections. My grandfather inspired me with his collections of unusual pencils and matchboxes, so I too began collecting those things. My uncle turned me on to the idea of collecting bottle caps, which then were used to play "bottle cap football" (that's another story for another day). Then there were the usual collections, such as seashells, coins and stamps, though I never really got into those in a big way, but I did keep them. My favorite collection, however, was probably sports cards: I had a lot of baseball cards, football cards, basketball cards, hockey cards, even Star Wars cards and Raiders of the Lost Ark cards. I was pretty passionate about my card collections, keeping them in shoeboxes with hand-designed dividers for each team, and I would keep track of trades in the newspaper and then move the traded player's cards to his new team. I would also get together with friends and have intensive trading sessions, seeing what duplicate cards I could pass off for a valuable new find from my friend's collection. It was the good ol' "I'll give you Carl Yastremski and Reggie Jackson for your Hank Aaron and Johnny Bench."

Sports cards are obviously still around, although I know collecting them has changed, because everyone keeps track of individual card values and has them in plastic sheets, not shoeboxes. And of course there's Yu-Gi-Oh and Pokemon cards, all quite popular with kids. But I recently came across a new type of card to collect, one which may not be too well known to kids, but could be a great gateway into the arts: "Artist Trading Cards." Do a Google search for this term and you'll see there are numerous sites devoted to this style of card. The idea is simple: take the standard format for sports cards - 3 ½ x 2 ½ inches, and keep this size consistent, but make the card anything you want: painting, drawing, photograph, collage. Make unique cards, or small editioned sets, sign them on the back, and then trade them! Several of the trading groups I found online have trading sessions where you mail in 10 of your own cards, and one of the organizers will take all of the submissions and split them up, so you will get 10 cards back by 10 different artists. It's exciting when the envelope comes back, wondering what interesting artist visions you'll find inside.

I get the feeling that many of these groups are adult artists, but why not encourage your kids to start their own groups? The cards have the comfortable familiarity in size and handling just like the sports and Pokemon cards, but it provides the challenge in seeing how to use a standardized format to make your own creative inventions. And compared to buying packs of those other cards in the store, you'll never get a duplicate - just a new piece to add to your own mini art collection!

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