a post-it note is a piece of paper with a re-adherable strip of adhesive on the back, designed for temporarily attaching notes to other surfaces. although now available in a wide range of colors, shapes, and sizes, post-it notes are most commonly canary yellow, 3-inch squares.
in 1968, dr. spencer silver, a chemist at 3M [which has a plant right here in springfield, missouri], developed a “low-tack”, reusable, pressure-sensitive adhesive.
in 1974, a colleague of his, art fry [what a great name, right?], who had attended one of silver’s seminars, came up with the idea of using the adhesive to anchor his bookmark in his hymnbook.
in 1997, the title characters in romy and michelle’s high school reunion pretended to have been the inventors of post-it notes to impress their fellow alumni. it didn’t work, because a fellow alumnus, portrayed by janeane garofalo, went to business school and actually knew about the real inventors of the post-it note mentioned above.
in the spring of 2011, LemonDrop hosted its first post-it note art show with great success and fanfare. it was fun for those who participated both in the creation of the work for the show and the frantic grabbing and buying of awesome, tiny artwork. due to popular demand, we lemondroppers decided to host another in the fall of the same year.
why post-it note art? because it creates an interesting creative challenge for our participating artists by limiting the scale and, in part, the media with which they may work, it allows us to present a wide variety of art for your consideration and, most of all, it makes art accessible to all at a low price and unintimidating scale. in this one show you are able to start a collection of work from some of springfield’s finest artists and it won’t break the bank or take up too much space. neat, right? we think so.
to those of you that contributed to the show by either making art, working during the event or attending the event, thank you for your participation in and contribution to the developing history of the post-it note.
