I've been making these promo packages for my show for VIPs, like art critics and museum curators. I have probably mentioned this. I made eighteen in total and won't be sending them out until July, but I needed to finish them to make room on my drawing table so I could get back to work on the rest of my paintings and drawings.
I got the idea for these from the Artist book I made a while ago. My show is called
THIS LAND, which you can read about in the link. The idea for the promo box was all in lieu of sending out Save the Date postcards. That seemed boring to me, and I wanted to make something more memorable. So, I came up with this promotional idea to put a bunch of themed items inside a mystery box.
Before this, I thought of just making promotional posters for the show after seeing one from the '80s by Keith Haring on Antiques Roadshow. It was kinda giant though, and I couldn’t afford anything that big, so I made one about the size of a 1960s concert poster, a 19 x 13-inch. I scored and folded them so they would fit inside the boxes I got. The rest of the posters will be given away for free at the show.
Also inside the box are my Save the Date cards, along with a drawing sample and a photograph that will be part of a drawing installation at the show. All three of those go into a kraft pocket fold that are tied with some jute, as seen here on top of one of the posters.
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The box also includes a vial of desert sand marked with the coordinates of Lost Horse Mine, a famous destination inside Joshua Tree National Park.
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There are a few other items in there, like a compass wrapped in handmade paper, sunscreen, chapstick, and a weird pencil made from a tree branch—just because it was cute.
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The folded poster goes on top and then the box is tagged with the person’s name.
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See? It’s a whole theme. Get it? I hope so. Or I hope it inspires at least a couple of these people to come to my show. I guess I could have placed a 100-dollar bill in there too as a bribe, but I'm not
that crazy. Shipping all of these will be expensive enough!
Now I can get back to finishing the paintings. I think I'm done with all the drawings for the wall installation, which is a nine-foot across area, but some of the left side will be taken up by a big ink drawing I made into a large vinyl decal about eighty-two inches high:
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This leaves me about fifty inches across to fill instead (much easier!). I have about 30 little drawings and at least 10 photographs to pin and tape over a few topographic and plat maps of the area, which will stuck onto the wall nilly-willy, yet arranged purposefully to look random.
I think these are the final drawings...(I haven't scanned all of them):
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