You've seen them: the ubiquitous, glossy rectangles gracing the spinning racks at every tourist site or convenience store across the globe... the Important Monument, the Historical Site, the Beautiful Park, the Famous Building... Postcards provide the images that depict a sense of place for tourists and locals. Or do they?

When cities are represented as a collection of glossy images much is left out. The day-to-day experiences and the places that shape the lives of the majority of residents is overlooked.

The intersection of these two observations is what generated the ongoing public art project called Greetings From MY Boston directed by architects and artists Gretchen Schneider and Erika Zekos. This project celebrates the diversity of Boston's unique people and places through a series of postcard designs. Greetings from MY Boston is one part of this series that has engaged inner-city youth, and you see the results on display in the PRC's storefront windows.

Student Apprentices at Citizen Schools Eighth Grade Academy (8GA) after-school program and from the 4th Presbyterian Music and Arts Program were given disposable cameras to create photo essays that depict the spirit of their neighborhoods. They worked with Erika, Gretchen, and Boston photographer Jamara Wakefield (herself a graduate of the Boston Photo Collaborative high school program) to learn about the cameras, how to compose and take strong pictures. Then through a guided process, they selected the photographs to be printed as postcards. The home neighborhoods of these students include Dorchester, Roxbury, Mattapan, Roslindale, Hyde Park and South Boston-places rarely, if ever, seen in tour guides or glossy postcard images on stands around the city.

Gretchen Schneider divides her time directing the architecture studios at Smith College and working at Rogers Marvel Architects in New York City. Erika Zekos has a design office and teaches architecture and design programs to K-12 students in Western Mass. Together they collaborate on public art projects and installations that invite discussion about the built environment.

The project has been funded by grants from the Boston Foundation for Architecture and the Kahn Institute at Smith College. A second round of 8GA apprenticeships has already finished and more are planned. Erika and Gretchen are working with Citizen Schools to continue the program, print more photographs and perhaps, provide sets for sale to fund scholarships for inner city youth in architecture and design programs at the college level. Additional sets will be distributed through the library system to local neighborhoods free of charge.

On display through March 26, 2006 are images by Angelo, Berlange, Gabrielle, Garfield, Hugo, Jessica, Kenneth, Leide, Marcel, Saequan, Shamonique, Shannon, and Simon. Enjoy!

To see more of the postcard images or contact Gretchen and Erika visit www.greetingsfromboston.com.

Click here to read the Boston Globe's article on the project.

Greetings From MY Boston is presented in conjunction with the PRC exhibition DOCUMENT. Click here to visit the exhibition website.