Secrets come out in postcard display on campus this month

By Iryna Dzyubynska

A collection of more than 200 handcrafted postcards containing secrets from all over the world is on exhibit this month at UK.

The PostSecret exhibit will open at 11 a.m. today at the Rasdall Gallery in the Student Center and will remain on display on weekdays from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. through Nov. 20.

Frank Warren started PostSecret as a community art project in Maryland in 2004, when he handed out blank postcards with a return address on the back and encouraged participants to anonymously share their secrets.

“I was fascinated with the interior lives of people,” Warren said, “so I decided to create a safe, nonjudgmental place where they could reveal their secret hopes, fears, regrets and desires.”

Soon, Warren’s project gained attention from across the country and then all over the world. Now over 20,000 secrets have been revealed through the project, which can be seen in four books, the All-American Rejects music video “Dirty Little Secret” and on a regularly updated blog (http://postsecret.blogspot.com).

Warren will speak about his project and share some unpublished secrets, including his own, at 8 p.m. on Wednesday in Worsham Theater.

Audience members at Wednesday’s event will receive cards to write out their own confessions. Students can submit their secrets to a drop box in the Rasdall Gallery or to the Student Activities Board office in room 203 of the Student Center during regular business hours.

As those cards are submitted, they will become part of the exhibit.

Warren said he receives secrets from all kinds of people, but mostly from people in their 20s and from women.

“In the exhibit at UK, students will find secrets that are shocking, funny or sexual, and then they would find the one secret that speaks for them — a confession from a stranger that would make them feel less alone,” Warren said.

The PostSecret exhibit, hosted by the Student Activities Board Cultural Art Committee, is intended to benefit UK students, said Callie Hanks, the committee’s cultural arts director.

“I wanted to bring Frank Warren, along with the PostSecret exhibit, because it is such a unique and interesting idea,” Hanks said. “It always feels good to let it out, ‘it’ being whatever your secret is.”

“But you don’t feel comfortable telling just anyone,” she said. “The PostSecret project allows people to anonymously ‘let it out.’ Frank recognized this and brought this idea to life.”