What is it that calls us to a place on a map?

Is it a sense of the topography or natural resources shown in pretty colours?

Is it from childhood stories or family photographs or just a swinging of a finger and a “there–that’s where I’ll go” that draws us to a certain point on the globe? 

I am not sure about any of this but I do know that since 2006 and my first trip to Mongolia, I have been drawn to go back in a very powerful way.  Partly it was from taking a train across the Gobi and falling in love with the great expanse of endless landscape.

Partly it was from the hospitality extended to me by the many herders I met and stayed with while traveling across the Steppe and up to Lake Hovsgul.    

From 2006-2009 I have been creating prints, water colours, paintings, poems and even two performances  inspired                                                                               

from this journey.  In 2009, I had an opportunity to take a short sabbatical from work and knew I had to head back to Mongolia…only this time, my finger pointed to the far western corner of the map on the Russia, China border….and I was obsessed about getting to this specific mark on the globe……

All rights reserved @ 2009 BAF

 Intellectually I had always wanted to go to Mongolia.  My grandparents, father and uncle lived and traveled across China from the1920s until 1949 and I grew up with stories and images of Asia.  (And don’t we all long for that place of empty steppe, Genghis Kahn and wild horses?)

Spiritually I have been drawn to Mongolia from a life long interest in Buddhism.  More recently, an attraction to the nomadic population and their deep connection to living in balance with Nature has inspired me to want to visit this vast country.

Visually, Mongolia has tugged at my

Landscape passion. As a painter of open empty space, I have sought a landscapes still void of cityscapes and towns. As an environmentalist, I was also excited to find a country where the land is still open for its people to share—no one is allowed to own land on the Steppe—it is for everyone.

 Mongolia

Blair Folts,2006 

Blue heads to blue

In this green and green landscape

Carved with ochres, reds and dotted with blacks and browns.         

Horses run, tails flying.

Bright reds, oranges and yellows flash

As we come upon lone herdsmen.

Sky is merged with land

Sun with grass

Moon with Earth.

Nothing is separate here.

Orange Lama greets me in a language I don’t know

But know.

White stupas pattern cobalt heavens

While he sings me his poem of

Gobi sands and steepe fertility.

We are all connected

In this place of wind and change

And no time has passed.

All rights reserved @ 2009 BAF

Inspired by my own Struggle to “not get too far from the pencil,” I wanted to create a way to travel to Mongolia and communcate with herders who are not yet dependent on the Internet.

When I traveled to Mongolia in 2006, I was surprised that the nomads I met asked me to write to them.

 “Where?” I thought–there were no streets where they lived on the steppe plus

they move 3-5 times a year.

But write I did and over the past few years, I have often thought about this. 

How does a culture which is still largely nomadic deal with the transition to the digital age where messages are instant and often not very personal? 
Is electronic messaging superior to the “post” or are we missing a key intimacy that is exchanged through the transfer of an object–from hand to hand over land, air and sea–such as the postcard?

 
Mongolia has always been an important country on trading routes. 

 Through the Mongolia Postcard Project, I have been able to pursue my own art and have also engaged people I met on the journey to be a part of this search “back to the pencil and handwritten note.” 

In every place I visited, people of all ages participated by drawing or painting a postcard. These cards were then mailed to USA, Canada and Europe. 

Participation

 Friends, artists, colleagues were invited to participate but had to mail their interest to me.

These envelopes and notes were part of several exhibits in 2010 in the USA.  

 I traveled in Mongolia for a month and invited people I met along the way to create a postcard which was then  mailed back to participants.  In November, participants were contacted and asked to lend back these postcards for an exhibit at the ArtHouse Gallery in Portland, Maine in Decemer of 2009 and Edge of Maine Gallery in Brownfield, Maine in the spring of 2010.

 Thanks to all the Mongolians, Americans and other friends I met along the road for your support and enthusiasm!

 Postcards on display at ART HOUSE in Portland Maine