Postcards don’t usually say much: On the front, there may be a picture from the museum or country your friend is visiting; on the back, a few lines that convey some small affection. This delicacy is what makes postcards special.
They carry feeling but not the freight of too much personality—they delight and ask for nothing in return. Or at least that’s what I felt about Keith Smith’s postcards, which the artisan bookmaker has been sending to friends for five decades now, a number of which have been brought together for this exhibition.
The postcards sit well in the gallery precisely because they aren’t intimate. They’re certainly not overburdened with text—some carry the artist’s signature, neatly printed, or poetic non sequiturs, such as “LATHER WAS THIRTY YEARS OLD TODAY . . . ” Smith uses the cards as little canvases or bulletin boards for his imagination. With photo negatives, drawings, cutouts, and stamps, he creates modestly sized collages from images that happen to surround him (often they are images of the artist himself).
