Small size holds big talent

Debra Gust admits this is not a typical art exhibition.

While the subjects are broad, and the media ranges from modern digital art to oil painting, there is one unifying aspect about all the artwork that makes the exhibit unique.

All are the size of a postcard.

"If you walk through an art gallery, you don't see too many artworks this size," she said. "It is an unusual art exhibition that allows for small works."

That was a requirement of individuals across the country who entered the Lake County Forest Preserve's Postcard Art Competition and Exhibition.

Now after reviewing more than 400 entries, 36 finalists will display their original designs starting Friday at the Lake County Discovery Museum near Wauconda.

The exhibit will open with an artists' reception and awards presentation from 5 to 8 p.m.

The finalists will be eligible to receive one of the top three awards of excellence to be announced at the opening.

The competition and exhibition, which began in 1995 and now is hosted every other year, serves to highlight the Curt Teich Postcard Archives.

The museum says the archives, which it houses, have the nation's most significant publicly held collection of postcards and related materials.

"This exhibition, focusing new, imaginative energy on a familiar form of expression, is dedicated to the American picture postcard, celebrating the postcard as art and a visual document," said Gust, the competition's coordinator.

This year, Gust said 458 individuals from the United States and Canada submitted entries into the competition.

Entries encompass all types of media including quilts, oil paintings, photography, digital art and collage. And many artists choose to document some aspect of 21st-century life.

"Every kind of subject matter that you can think of will be on a postcard," she said.

Entries were judged based on creativity, content, technical expertise and reproducibility as a postcard. This year's judge was Lisa Stone, curator of the Roger Brown Study Collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Sets of the winning images will be available starting Friday at the reception. The cost is $9 per set.

The exhibit will then travel to five other sites in Lake, McHenry and Cook counties.

If you go

What: Postcard Art Competition and Exhibition

Where: Lake County Discovery Museum, in the Lakewood Forest Preserve off Route 176, near Wauconda

When: Opens Friday with artists' reception and awards at 5 p.m. Runs through Dec. 30.