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#birds
#mail
#stamps
February 19, 2021
Grace Ebert
When it’s launched later this summer time, a brand new stamp from the U.S. Postal Service will illuminate a bit of Indigenous tradition that’s lengthy been related to an escape from darkness. Titled “Raven Story,” the history-making postage options an iconic animal rendered by Rico Lanáat’ Worl, who’s the primary Tlingit and Athabascan artist to be featured by U.S.P.S. Awash with twinkling stars, the stamp portrays a black hen greedy the solar in its beak because it breaks from its human household. The motif relies on the story of “Raven And The Field Of Daylight,” conventional Tlingit lore concerning the trickster animal bringing the celebs, moon, and solar to the universe after a sequence of heists.
In an announcement, Worl shares that the raven is a distinguished determine in Tlinglit tradition, and the stamp depicts the top of this often-recounted story. He writes:
Raven is making an attempt to seize as many stars as he can, some caught in his feathers and in his fingers or in his beak. Some falling round him. It’s a frazzled second of adrenaline. Partially nonetheless in human kind, as depicted as his hand nonetheless being human, as he carries the celebs away. I feel it depicts a second all of us have skilled, the cusp of failure and accomplishment.
Worl lives in Juneau, the place he works with Sealaska Heritage Institute and co-runs Trickster Firm, a design store targeted on Northwest Coast artwork, together with his sister, Crystal. To coincide with the USPS launch, he plans to create pins, prints, and different items that includes the design, which you’ll be able to observe on Instagram. (by way of Hyperallergic)
#birds
#mail
#stamps
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