For some time now, Kat Sloma has been organizing a postcard swap for people from around the world.  She did it again this year too! Not sure how she has time to do it with her own stuff, including a great book I’m working through about iPhone photography, but she does it anyways!.

This year, as in the past, I sent in 5 cards and and mailing labels with my address. Kat and her merry band put the labels on other random cards and sent them out at staggered intervals. I got these 5 cards from the main swap!

Going clockwise, starting bottom far left is Janice Darby’s cool dream like girl with and elephant card, Dorothy Lewis’ primitive art collage, Deb Keyworth’s handdrawn mandala, Sarah Calhoun’s Georgia mountain, and last but not least, Janet Reid’s very cool Artemis painting.  I urge you to check out those links. Cool stuff lurks within!

Side swaps are a big part of the Liberate Your Art thing for me! Those are swaps by members of the LYA page that are arranged between ourselves! Look at all this awesomeness!

Starting from top left and going clockwise again, you see Sherry Harme’s cool card from Alaska. It has a lovely note on the back, but another cool thing I’ve never seen is spaces for the weather conditions (on 3-20 ti was 31 degrees, with 2 foot seas and winds at 5 kph) on her remote island off Kodiak, Alaska. Patrica Lawrence’s spray paint through grandmothers stencil is cool. Amy Irwen sent me the cool bridge card. The crazy gorilla on a phone booth came from Susan Byrne all the way in Ireland! The lovely collage by Amy Irwen was her response to the bombing in Paris last year.  Janice Darby sent the lady in blue (that she collaborated on with her 4 yeat old grand daughter and  Teena Lurlene sent the lovely contemplative candle.

Susan Prentzel in Florida sent me the pier shot, Diane McWhirter in Australia gets the prize for longest distance from me and did the amazing owl with colored pencils. Her work is just amazing! The Mission in San Juan Capistrano is Sonya Versluys‘ subject. The ships were in a salvage yard in France and sent to my by Louise Mamet She also has the distinction of the longest address in my list!  Carol sent me her card from Israel! It’s of a painting for her 30×30 challenge.

And to top it off, Kat sent this lovely card ( done on an iPhone!) to all the participants!

A while back I reviewed Ashley’s project .  She is one of my favorite photographers as you may have deduced. She has always been fragile I think, but, now she is in the health battle of her life.

She may not win. 

I can’t tell you how much that makes my spirit ache. Just thinking it is hard. She apparently has some autoimmune disorders and a host of other issues that aren’t simple to diagnose or treat.  I hate to see her suffering, and the thought of losing her so early is like a knife in the gut to me.

Ashley Lebedev has a Gofundme page. I hope you’ll make a donation there. If you’re localish (Philly, DC, Baltimore, etc)  to me, I’d love to do a photo shoot for you and have you donate to her gofundme instead of paying me. I can’t stand the idea of sitting by and watching without doing something to try to stop this.