Airport Photo with Spears towards Christmas

An original artist-made postcard has two sides, and both are messages. So it is with the cards of Mick Boyle, even though (or especially because) most of his messages are visual.

The obverse of his most recent card is an early view of Christmas. Bright red lines divide the face of the card into four rectangles. A simmering red image of a face (his?) sits below his contact information and above an antique Christmas card image of a man carrying a tannenbaum out of the woods. This seasonal image (along with the standard George Washington 23-cent stamp) introduces green (the traditional counterpoint to red in the Christmas color symbology) to this panel.


Mick Boyle, [Airport Photo Card] (Obverse) (22 Nov 2004)
This card is about balance and division, starting with the Mondrian-like division of the panel. The recipient's address is bookended with two spears (images of the splinter from my foot previously appearing in Boyle's "HURT HUTH"). The address itself is hyper-balanced: My name begins with a capital letter and ends with one, the major part of the address is forced into a tight force-justified rectangle, and the zip code (postal code) uses the equivalent of capital numerals at either of its ends.

The other side of the card is totally different: black and white, hazy, and merely a simple photograph of a man in an airport. Mick explains it (on the other side of the card) as "from a series of airport photographs."


Mick Boyle, [Airport Photo Card] (Reverse) (22 Nov 2004)
un violon d'ingres