ACEO Mini Art

After opening my Corvid Studios store I became fascinated with ACEO's or art Trading Cards. The reason I fell in love with them is two reasons size and price.

ACEO stands for Art Cards Editions and Originals. An ACEO is always two and one-half inches by three and one-half inches and are highly collectible. ACEOs are tiny art works, they are either original art, limited edition art prints or open ended art prints.  There are many people who want to collect works of art but may have either a limited budget, limited space or both. This allows these people to create a viable art collection as art trading cards are usually signed, titled and dated by the original artist. Many people display their ACEO collections in the same kind of plastic sheets and albums that sports card collectors use or frame and hang them on the wall.

I have read many many articles about the history of the artist trading card. My conclusion is that there seems to be no real lineage for the introduction of the Artist Trading Cards. However their rise in popularity seems to be traced back to the Mail Art and Fluxus movements of the 1960s, and even earlier to the Dadaist movement of the 1920s. 

Then enter 1996, Swiss artist  M. Vänci Stirnemann decided to document his activities with other artists by producing a catalogue of 1,200 cards he created by hand. He exhibited the cards at his bookstore gallery in Zürich in May 1997. On the last day of the exhibit, Stirnemann invited anyone who wanted a card to create their own ATC to trade during the closing reception. Luckily, Canadian artist Chuck Stake (aka Don Mable) attended Stirnemann’s exhibition and also participated in trading these cards while in Zürich. Stake became ecited about these ATCs and collaborated with Stirnemann to stage “The First International Biennial of Artist Trading Cards” at The New Gallery in Calgary, Canada that included 80 artists from 10 different countries. Since then, with the help of the Internet, interest in ATCs has spread around the globe.

Luckily for the average joe who has a love for art, ACEOs are very affordable. I know that I catch myself drooling over many beautiful works of art hoping the come in an ACEO format so I can add them to my growing collection. I will be posting some of own original ACEOs soon and all of my prints come in ACEO formats on my store. feel free to check them out at  Corvid Art Studios