As a 24-year-old artist based in Los Angeles, Stephen Hutchison was not surprisingly having a hard time getting his work noticed.
"I've been making artwork for a very long time," Hutchison told The Huffington Post. "And I've struggled to find a venue or an audience for many reasons, but it wasn't until I required participation from people that I got such a level of interest."
The participation he speaks of is simple: fans of Hutchison's work request a postcard through one of his websites, and he mails it to them.
The postcards are part of his online exhibit "Tomorrow Is Going to Be Bizarre," but they're hardly his first attempt at an online art project.
Hutchison works primarily in photography and video production and editing. The "Tomorrow Is Going to Be Bizarre" collection of digital photography features highly stylized portraits of musculature and body builders -- a frenzied take on the human form.
Another collection, "Terrestrial," focuses on VHS video and inkjet prints with bursting light and forms that seem at once earthy and otherworldly in scale.
The artwork for the postcards was all done before Hutchison even came up with the idea for the project. "I wanted to create something that could only be made by the person who created the original images," he said, adding that the postcards "are still something entirely new and different."
At the time of this writing, Hutchison said he had approximately 150 postcards ready for mailing. He told HuffPost Arts that he'd like to keep sending them for as long as he can afford to -- a plan that's been slightly complicated by his decision to send accordion-like folding postcards, which are more expensive. The artist plans to still send at least around 500 cards, so get them while you can.
What do you think of Hutchison's project? He hopes to funnel the idea of audience participation into another sort of interactive project, so give us your ideas for his next piece in the comments below.
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