Love Delivery: Pink helps you say what you really feel

If you’ve walked around in Wicker Park during July and August, you might have noticed something other than the thick-bearded hipster set: pink-clad bikers riding around, some dressed in full-body white jump suits. Ensconced in the basement of St. Paul’s Community Church for the last month has been Pink, a courier service/conceptual art project in which people can write love notes to anyone they want and have them delivered via bicycle by the project’s volunteers.
“I wanted to do something that engaged people,” says artist Jaclyn Pryor (whose “Pink” name is Heffi McHefferson, a pseudonym of unknown origins), the projector’s director. She was commissioned by First Night Austin, an Austin-based arts festival in 2006, where the project first took place. “We wanted to do something where people could come in and be a part of the experience of something being made.”
Upon walking in, people sit down at a typewriter to hammer their note out, with books of poetry lying around to offer inspiration. After finishing the note, it’s strung up on a clothesline, and the person yells “Love on the line!” as it’s sent down to reception, where the note is collected and logged into a computer which keeps track of every note (the project had couriered around 1,200 notes, according to Pryor). The screed is then sent to the assembly line, where volunteers scroll and bottle the notes before sending them out for delivery.
“It’s interesting to me how vulnerable and intimate people will be in this context,” she says with a small look of surprise on her face. “They know it’s being delivered by volunteers and scrolled by volunteers and they don’t know who’s reading it, but it gives people a vehicle to express things they’re not going to put in an e-mail and not going to say to someone’s face and they don’t have to wait for it to be someone’s birthday.” In fact, everyone is asked whether or not their notes can be scanned and archived for future use. A lot of people agree, meaning that their innermost feelings and desires could be available for anyone to see.
The biking can be arduous. A blown-up map of Chicago has pink dots placed on every area delivered to, including far West, North and South. “We had a courier go out last night to Hyde Park to deliver six notes to Barack Obama,” Pryor laughs. “She tried to deliver them to his house, but the Secret Service told her to send them to his office.”
Though the project has officially ended, Pryor and her co-workers will be in Chicago until the final batch of notes has been delivered. There’ll be a break until next year, when Pink goes back on the road and picks a different city to bless with love notes for a summer month. Their stay in Chicago won’t be soon forgotten by anyone who had the pleasure of finding a biker at their door with a love note in hand. (Jeremy Gordon)