The new USPS flag stamp is based on a car dealership flag
The illustration is based on three photos the artist took of the same Maryland car dealership flag
The U.S. Postal Service announced new stamps for 2022 last week, including the latest edition of their American flag stamp, by illustrator Laura Stutzman with Ethel Kessler as art director.
The illustration is based on three photos Stutzman took of the same Maryland car dealership flag, and the images were then arranged as if in a circular formation, like the flags that encircle the Washington Monument, per USPS. The 2022 stamp will be Stutzman’s ninth flag stamp, following two blocks of four stamps released in 2008 and 2013.
“Everything pretty much comes to a screeching stop to accommodate it because it has an emotional aspect that’s different than pop culture and other things that we do,” she told me. “To get really sappy, I’m 63, and my mom died when I was 30, and every time I do a stamp, I think of her, I think of how proud she would have been.”
Stamps are unlike any other work Stutzman does, she said.
“It’s creating currency,” she said. “So that’s not like any other job, you know, when you create something that has that intrinsic value that can’t be copied.”
All the rules for displaying the flag IRL apply to depicting it on a stamp.
“You have to keep in mind all of the protocols for displaying the flag,” she said. “If I were to set up an image that had the flag lit in the wrong way or hanging the wrong way, or doesn’t have 50 stars, all of that applies, and there is a very strict protocol for handling the flag and displaying it.”
While stamp design tends to be more traditional, Stutzman said it’s “not as stiff and rigid as it used to be.”
“When the Love stamp came out, that was when it turned a huge corner,” she said. “A stamp that commemorates, that is highlighting and embracing love, that was just totally different.”
The 2022 Love stamp, by Bailey Sullivan, will come in blue and pink.
Other stamps coming next year include a portrait of Edmonia Lewis, the first professional African-American sculptor, by Alex Bostic; a portrait of legendary Washington Post publisher and president Katharine Graham, by Lynn Staley; and a book of four stamps depicting female athletes in yellow laurel branches to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the passage of Title IX, by Melinda Beck.
“The new 2022 stamps are miniature works of art, designed to be educational and appeal to collectors and pen pals around the world,” USPS Stamp Services Director William Gicker said in a statement.
You can see the full list of new stamps here.
See more >> [The Nancy Reagan stamp is here. Here's what Jill Biden said.]
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