Acclaimed Acton Artist Unveils Post-It Note Exhibit

They have become a staple in corporate cubicles, home offices and refrigerators.

The little square, colorful reminder pads that we stick to surfaces so we don't forget important dates, chores or phone calls.

But now, Post-it Notes have evolved into pieces of art thanks to one Acton resident's vision.

Acclaimed artist Betsyann Duval has unveiled her latest exhibit, Infinite Progression – an eclectic collection of fine art created on Post-it Notes, at the Bromfield Gallery in Boston.  

"I really like my work to be interactive," she told Acton Patch. "With this show, everybody feels comfortable drawing on Post-it Notes ... it's so neat."

For the past three years, Duval has been making art on Post-it Notes—sometimes one a day, other times many. Using wax crayons on Post-it Notes of various colors, Duval has created more than 700 miniature works. The infinite collection ranges in size from 3x3-inch notes to 6x6-foot paintings - larger works of art that have been scaled up in size using traditional materials.

"I became addicted to them," she said. "I'm very interested in performace art. I said I'm going to give them to people and post them where them where I think they should be, then decided since I had a solo show coming up, I thought it would be neat to just do Post-it Notes."

More than 300 of them have been distributed in public and private settings, given to friends or strangers on the street, or left on the walls of museums and washrooms.   

“Post-it Notes are by their very nature ephemeral,” Duval says. “Making these notes has become a work-of-art in its own right – a durational performance where individual notes capture a moment in time and where collected notes transform that moment into a continuum. Although the ephemeral nature of the notes has been integral to this work, I began wondering if I could transform the notes into larger, more concrete forms of art using traditional materials and larger sizes.  By thinking of them not just as a progression in time, but also as progressions in size, theme, or abstraction.”

Duval has received awards in national exhibitions from noted jurors including a First Prize, Painting from Lisa Dennison, Deputy Director and Chief Curator, Soloman R. Guggenheim Museum; a Director’s Prize from Maxwell Anderson, Director, Whitney Museum of American Art; and a Print Prize from Peter Rathbone, VP and Director of the American Paintings and Sculpture, Sotheby’s.

"I thought this would be fun to take to schools because there's so much freedom working on a Post-it Note," she said. "It's just a Post-it Note. You don't have to be thinking about drawing well, or doing it a certain way or if it's good or bad."

According to Duval, crayons on Post-it Notes is a fun creative medium that opens up creative channels producing jewel-like results, in the tradition of miniatures, but with none of the constrictions. Exhibit visitors are invited to free their creative imaginations and create their own Post-it Note art while at the gallery.

"The show has become a series of notes and time, paintings of space and abstraction," she said. "When people come to the gallery, I invite people to make their own Post-it Notes. It's really been so much fun and intellectually intersting.

Her work has appeared in many solo and juried group exhibitions in the U.S. and Europe.  It is also in private and corporate collections, and is included in The National Museum of Women in the Arts, Archives of Women Artists.

And as for her next big idea?

"I don't know. I really love Post-it Notes," she said. "I've become really versatile in continuing to work with them. I love doing layers of images from my Post-it Notes. I use these crayons that give a glazing effect, think layers of color ... it makes images very vibrant filled with light. I'm thinking of making larger paintings on theater scrim. The material lighted from the front becomes opaque, and from the back transparent."

For more information on Duval and the Infinite Progression exhibit, visit www.duvalart.com.