“I’m tired of people complaining about Skyline. Shut the (expletive removed) up! It’s four years of your life! Deal with it!”
This is the first secret Skyline High School seniors Jenna Kovalsky and Andrea Nishi received in their P.O. Box as part of their community art project called Plateau PostSecret. It’s a localized version of the national phenomenon started by a Maryland resident named Frank Warren, who passed out blank postcards to random strangers asking them to anonymously express a secret of theirs on the back and mail them back to him.
More than 200,000 secrets have been released to him since he started the project in 2004. Now, Kovalsky and Nishi are hoping to bring some of that same emotional power to the Plateau.
“I just was really inspired by Frank Warren,” Kovalsky said. “It was really incredible to watch this over the past four years, how much this project grew.”
In order to get word out about the project, Kovalsky and Nishi started a blog in March 2008 at www.plateaupostsecret.blogspot.com, similar in style to Warren’s blog. They’ve also created a group called Plateau PostSecret on Facebook that currently has 167 members, most of whom are local high school students.
“There are a lot of people who go through a lot of things, especially in high school, and that’s a big target audience for this project,” Kovalsky said. “People who may feel alone about their secrets find that that’s really not the case. I know I relate to a lot of the secrets we’ve gotten.”
But they’re not only gearing the project towards teens — ideally they’d like to get the most diverse picture of Plateau life possible.
“Living around here, you have a really low impression of the people, just based on the stereotypical Plateau dweller,” Nishi said. “We just wanted to see how people really are beneath the whole shell of the Plateau.”
Kovalsky also liked the idea that secrets could be specific to the area.
“Bringing it to the Plateau makes the secrets much more personal and kind of exclusive to this area, whereas you look at the Web site that Frank Warren updates every week and … you don’t see anything that shows a secret about Pine Lake or Skyline High School,” Kovalsky said. “We’ve gotten those secrets, and it’s just so interesting to see that.”
The secrets have displayed a range of feelings, from dark despair to light, good humor. One confesses, “I judge people by their looks,” while another proclaims, “Whenever I jump, I try to be like Mario” over a picture of the video game icon.
“They’re all over the place,” Kovalsky said. “We have some serious ones and some not-so-serious ones.”
The pair have received several dozen postcards via mail, but most of their success has come through events like Pine Lake at the Park, where the girls brought the project to the people.
“We got a lot of response from all different age groups,” Nishi said.
They will continue to advertise at community events, on community bulletin boards, and even through their original venue, local coffee shops.
“We’ve been going around the community and really tried to get this project going because it really depends on the people in the community and if they’re going to write to us,” Kovalsky said. “If we get enough feedback, at some point I want to make a book, kind of like Frank’s.”
Warren has published four books, consisting completely of PostSecret cards. Kovalsky and Nishi want to create a special version for this area as the ultimate portrait of their community.
“A lot of people have attested to looking through one of (Warren’s) books or on his Web site and they see maybe a dozen of their secrets and none of their postcards,” Kovalsky said. “You don’t have to actually send in a postcard to be affected by this project. It’s this idea that connects everyone.”
Got a secret?
Please mail secrets to:
P.O. Box 1068
Issaquah, WA 98027
