Jacksonville Postcard

Created in spring 2024 for ARTS 238 (Screen Printing)

Media: Screen print on paper

Artist Statement: I was born in Jacksonville, Florida and lived there until I was 8 years old. My childhood consisted of razor scooters and green machines with my neighbors in the cul-de-sac, bike rides to the neighborhood pool and pond, boogie boarding, squabbling with my older brother, soccer games, trips to the playground, borrowing my mom’s hot pink iPod nano and headphones until they became mine, and my parent’s divorce. My parents separated when I was in first grade, and my mom, brother, and I moved to North Carolina before my second grade started. From that point on, my relationship with my dad—who I had never been close with and had always been embarrassed by—became characterized by one-sided rants about my mom, my mom’s family, and how they were manipulating my brother and I. These rants—and our relationship—became more frequent and more vicious during my adolescence.

For this project, I wanted to depict landmarks important to my childhood: the historical house attached to the trail of my favorite playground, the entrance to my neighborhood, the club house with the “new” pool, the pavilion at the pond by my house where we always biked to and (forcibly) fished at, the “Adopt-A-Highway” sign that always looked like a pelican to me, my mailbox overgrown with honeysuckle, and our living room windows. These evoke suburbia mundanity, but they are contextualized with a message on the back, texted to me by my dad when I was twice the age of when my parents separated (7, 14), in which he—for what was not the first, nor would it be the last time—talked poorly about my mom, her family, their divorce, and me.

I digitally traced images of these historic places and compiled them to look like a postcard. Some pieces of paper are designed with marker, colored markers, or crayons to emulate my art style as a young girl. The fronts of the postcards look pretty and colorful, but the backs are complicated and critical. The stamp features a photo of my dad giving me a piggyback ride to school—a tradition he insisted on, purposely parking as far away as possible to make it last longer and ensure everyone saw. I was always mortified and hated every moment of it.