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    Vintage Postcard Paintings by David Opdyke Demonstrate an Ecological Future in Peril

    “Overlook” (2025). gouache, acrylic, ink, and 42 vintage postcards
    on panel, 32 x 40 inches. All images courtesy of the artist and Cristin Tierney Gallery, shared with permission

    Vintage Postcard Paintings by David Opdyke Demonstrate an Ecological Future in Peril

    March 19, 2025

    ArtClimate

    Kate Mothes

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    The first known postcard printed as a souvenir can be traced to Vienna in 1871, followed by commemorative cards for famous events like the completion of the Eiffel Tower in 1889 and the Chicago World’s Fair in 1893. It wasn’t long before a fashion for picture postcards took the U.S. by storm throughout the first half of the 20th century.

    For David Opdyke, the iconic correspondences form the groundwork for an artistic practice examining capitalism, globalization, consumerism, and our fraught and increasingly disconnected relationship with the environment. Occasionally darkly humorous yet steeped in a sense of foreboding, his uncanny scenes suggest what kind of world we might live in we do nothing to stem the mounting climate crisis.

    “Charismatic Megafauna” (2024), gouache and ink on vintage postcard, 4 x 6 inches

    Opdyke summons idyllic coastlines, national parks, government monuments, wildlife, and civic infrastructure to weave “fractured yet cohesive topographies,” says Cristin Tierney Gallery, which is presenting the artist’s current solo exhibition, Waiting for the Future.

    For nearly a decade, Opdyke has invoked the nostalgia of landscape postcards to interrogate the climate emergency within the context of American politics and geographies. “Through these carefully altered compositions, Opdyke merges the past and the future, presenting both urgent and inevitable visions of environmental upheaval,” the gallery says.

    The artist often uses antique cards that he purchases on eBay, painting scenes of environmental disasters or discordances between nature and architecture. Alternating between cartoons and life-like portrayals of trees, animals, fires, and structures, his compositions range from single cards to wall-spanning assemblages, his gouache-painted details spreading from frame to frame.

    In “Overlook,” for example, giant tentacles destroy bridges, rising sea water threatens cities, and huge fires rage in institutional buildings. A dome encloses a metropolis, a rocket named Mars 2 heads for a new home in the solar system, and an airplane banner advertises “Technology Will Save Us” in a bleak yet not unimaginable reality fueled by techno-utopianism.

    “Enough of Nature” (2025), gouache, acrylic, and ink on 500 vintage postcards, 104 x 168 inches

    In his large-scale “Enough of Nature,” Opdyke transforms natural landscapes into encampment sites for those displaced from their homes, and portions of the overall composition appear to dislodge from the main grid as if floating away.

    Caught tenuously between outmoded industrial practices, shifting societal value systems, and a rapidly evolving climate crisis, Opdyke’s pieces point to once-idealized symbols of American progress to stress the dangers of ignoring our own impact on the environment.

    Waiting for the Future underscores the precariousness of complacency, a “cautionary tale,” the gallery says, laying bare the fragility of our constructed environment.

    The show continues through April 26 in New York City. Find more on the artist’s website.

    Detail of “Overlook”

    “Main Stage” (2015-2020), gouache on vintage postcard, 6 x 4 inches

    “Unity, Industry, Victory” (2024), gouache and ink on vintage postcard, 6 x 4 inches

    “Insurrection” (2015-2020), gouache on vintage postcard, 4 x 6 inches

    “Fourth Wall” (2015-2020), gouache on vintage postcard, 4 x 6 inches

    “If you can’t say something nice” (2024), gouache and ink on two vintage postcards, 4 x 12 1/2 inches

    “Breaking In” (2015-2020), gouache on vintage postcard, 6 x 4 inches

    Detail of “Enough of Nature”

    “First Contact” (2023), gouache and ink on vintage postcard, 4 x 6 inches

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    Subversively Embroidered Money and Penny Sculptures Question Historical Narratives

    
    Art

    #coins
    #embroidery
    #metal
    #money
    #politics
    #sculpture
    #social commentary

    March 18, 2021
    Grace Ebert

    From Insurrection Bills. All images © Stacey Lee Webber, shared with permission
    Throughout 2020, Stacey Lee Webber developed Insurrection Bills, a revisionary collection of United States currency overlaid with subversive stitches: flames envelop monuments, a wall is left unfinished, and an eclectic array of face masks disguise Abraham Lincoln’s portrait. Contrasting the muted tones of the paper, the vibrant embroideries stand in stark contrast and as amended narratives to those depicted on the various denominations. “The series references feelings of anger, turmoil, and frustration during the tense political climate while recontextualizing and questioning the beloved iconography we see on our money,” she tells Colossal.
    Currently working from her studio and home in Philadelphia’s Globe Dye Works, Webber is formally trained in metalsmithing—she has an MFA from the University of Wisconsin, where she initially began using currency as the basis of her projects—and sees the two mediums as an ongoing conversation. Embroidery “allows me to work in a quieter setting outside of my metal shop acting as a sort of ying to the yang, soft and hard, masculine and feminine,” she says.
    Many of Webber’s sculptures involve soldering coins, including the copper penny works that make up The Craftsmen Series and question the value of blue-collar labor in the U.S. Comprised of hollow, life-sized tools, the collection visualizes “putting endless amounts of work into a single cent,” the artist says.
    Webber has multiple exhibitions this year, including at TW Fine Art Palm Beach Outpost in April, Philadelphia’s Bertrand Productions in October, and Art on Paper Fair in New York City this November. If you can’t see the currency-based projects in person, head to Instagram, where the artist shares a larger collection of her works and glimpses into her studio.

    “Masked Abes,” from Insurrection Bills
    From Insurrection Bills
    Detail of “Masked Abes,” from Insurrection Bills
    A ladder from The Craftsmen Series, soldered pennies
    From Insurrection Bills
    Jewelry made from coins

    #coins
    #embroidery
    #metal
    #money
    #politics
    #sculpture
    #social commentary

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    “You won’t see what I’ve become” by Beast in North Italy

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