“Got it. Got it. Want it.”
Artist Trading Cards are one of a kind
BY Alexis Dobranowski
Marina Dempster’s binder looks as if it’s filled with baseball cards, but upon closer inspection, the Torontonian’s cards are actually mini-masterpieces
—photographs, paintings or sketches adorn the spots that sports heroes usually occupy. These are Artist Trading Cards, and they form the basis of an underground art movement based on social interaction and art for art’s sake. Cards can even be made from collages, glass, wire—anything goes, as long as it’s 2.5 by 3.5 inches. Traders attend monthly sessions where they meet and swap cards.
“You don’t have to be an ‘artist’ to participate, though my view is that everybody is an artist anyway,” says Dempster, who has been trading since 2002.
The cards are the brainchildren of Zurich’s m. vänçi stirnemann, imported to Canada by Calgary’s Don Mabie. While working as members of an international performance troupe in Calgary for the 1988 Olympics, the two men would talk about life and art, laugh and trade hockey cards. Stirnemann, also a visual artist, later decided to document the experience, doing so by hand, using the hockey-card format.
In 1997, he showed 1,200 cards at his gallery in Zurich. They were for sale, but stirnemann also invited people to return with their own handmade cards to trade instead of buy.
Mabie attended that fi rst-ever trading session. “Probably 20 to 25 people showed up, and when it was over, people said, ‘When are we doing this again?’” he says. Stirnemann encouraged traders to visit the following month. When he returned home, Mabie launched the medium at the New Gallery in Calgary.
The idea spread, and the New Gallery now hosts monthly trading sessions with dozens of regulars. And while the phenomenon has yet to go mainstream, it’s gained momentum, with about 20 to 30 regular trading sessions taking place across Canada, and thousands of people trading in the U.S.
While money was never meant to be involved, the cards have grown popular enough that some participants are trying to profi t from them. “There are hundreds and hundreds of cards for sale on eBay these days,” Mabie says. “We’re a culture that’s obsessed with money and ATCs are not about that.”
