This is a legacy post from our work as Vrooooom Press. We now publish under the name Mystic Multiples, in Houston, Texas.
I had the pleasure of working with independent curator Leslie Moody-Castro on the creation of this invitation series, which was commissioned to promote the opening of her show, My Wicked Twisted Sense of Love, at the Women and their Work gallery here in Austin.
During our planning sessions, Leslie explained the theme of the show to me, and we worked together over a few sessions to sketch out an idea of what we wanted to accomplish with this project. We agreed that we wanted to stay away from the standard “exhibit postcard” style of invitation, which seems to run rampant throughout arts organizations. Instead, a unique piece of hand-printed ephemera seemed like the perfect match for the subject and style of the show.
In an attempt to bring the invitee into the show’s conversation, we decided to take exerts from Leslie’s own love letters and break-up letters, and craft a split edition of invitations to send out on the mailing list. Approximately 2000 invitees would receive an anonymous love letter from the show’s curator, while the remaining 2000 invitees on the mailing list received anonymous break-up letters. Due to the construction of the invitations, all invites looked identical from the outside, so there was no way of telling which version any given invitee would receive.
On another note, this project marks one of the largest print runs ever produced through Vrooooom Press, with approximately 4000 finished invitations produced. This entire edition was screen printed and folded by hand over the course of a week with the help of Leslie and several of her friends. We could not have made this happen without that assistance! Thank you to everyone involved!
