2nd Annual |
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“THE WORLD BEFORE US IS A POSTCARD, AND I IMAGINE THE STORY WE ARE WRITING ON IT.” ― MARY E. PEARSON
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EDITORIAL NOTE
from Jes & Nawal
A postcard is a dream you can hold in your hand: ephemeral, a little rough-edged from its journey, providing a glimpse of its originator.
In the Art of the Postcard series, we invite you to participate in an often overlooked, indefatigable medium that vacillates between the outdated notions of high and low art, that blends art and writing, and whose two-sided format requires physical interaction with the object. The postcard's complex power lies in its ability to illuminate the lives, plights, thoughts, visions, dreams of anyone, of any status. Indeed, the postcard is only at its strongest when viewed and experienced as part of a collective, functioning simultaneously as art and poetry, and “as a documentary image, correspondence, a lithographic or photographic print, advertisement” (from Sarah Ferguson's “A Murmur of Small Voices”: On the Picture Postcard in Academic Research). Once again, we're honored to showcase people's missives in our annual feature The Art of the Postcard. What do you see in them? What do you hear in them? Did you catch the one that made its way through the postal system with fake stamps? How about the one written by a professor of mathematics? Do you read the text first or is your eye drawn across the image? How deeply do you choose to engage? Each postcard is its own little world, contained. Please, look around. |
Featured Postcard
Click each postcard to enlarge. Swipe to read both sides.
Click each postcard to enlarge. Swipe to read both sides.
About the featured postcard: GC Churnage returns again this year with his format of creating postcard art on foam-core. Recorded on the reverse is Inverted Syntax’s address and the creator’s email. Click on the postcards to enlarge.
Introducing themself as "GC," "churnage," and an email address, the postcard author writes, "I’ve been a writer longer than I’ve been an artist. My poetry has been published in several publications. Postcards are a way for me to extend my writing into a visual medium. They're like mixed-media haikus."
About the postcards: "I use surrealism, subversion, juxtaposition, humor, non sequiturs, randomness, questions, among other techniques, to goad / coax / woo viewers out of their waking sleep. Sometimes, I start by collaging cut-out images on a blank postcard canvas. Sometimes, I paint a large piece of foam-core with all kinds of crazy colors and then chop it up into smaller postcard canvasses. Then add words and images, as necessary. Sometimes, I paint over collaged images. I'm still learning and experimenting with different techniques. I started making collaged postcards for family members who were away from home. They responded enthusiastically to these hand-crafted creations, so I kept at it."
Introducing themself as "GC," "churnage," and an email address, the postcard author writes, "I’ve been a writer longer than I’ve been an artist. My poetry has been published in several publications. Postcards are a way for me to extend my writing into a visual medium. They're like mixed-media haikus."
About the postcards: "I use surrealism, subversion, juxtaposition, humor, non sequiturs, randomness, questions, among other techniques, to goad / coax / woo viewers out of their waking sleep. Sometimes, I start by collaging cut-out images on a blank postcard canvas. Sometimes, I paint a large piece of foam-core with all kinds of crazy colors and then chop it up into smaller postcard canvasses. Then add words and images, as necessary. Sometimes, I paint over collaged images. I'm still learning and experimenting with different techniques. I started making collaged postcards for family members who were away from home. They responded enthusiastically to these hand-crafted creations, so I kept at it."
Discover More POSTCARDS
Click each postcard to enlarge. Swipe to read both sides.
Laura Gamache writes, "I am a poet who has had the privilege of leading creative writing workshops with kids in schools in the Seattle area and elsewhere since 1992. I made the paint and tape piece that I cut up to make the background for this postcard with three friends on Shaw Island three or four years ago. The architect of the project died this April 30th. I loved her and will miss her fierce facing off against injustice."
C. R. Resetarits is a writer and visual artist. Her writing appears in Southern Humanities Review and Native Voices: Indigenous American Poetry, Craft and Conversations (Tupelo press). Her collages appear in New Southern Fugitive, Midway, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Gasher, Sonder Review, Pretty Owl Poetry, Empty Mirror, and National Review.
Resetarits writes, "The postcards/poems are from a series of postcard collages I’m working on. The image of the woman is my most formidable great aunt Esther who died this [2019] spring at 102."
Resetarits writes, "The postcards/poems are from a series of postcard collages I’m working on. The image of the woman is my most formidable great aunt Esther who died this [2019] spring at 102."
Meg Freer grew up in Montana and now lives with her family in Kingston, Ontario, where she teaches piano and music history. She enjoys outdoor activities year-round, photography, and running, and wishes she had more time for writing poetry. In 2017 she won a fellowship and attended the Summer Literary Seminars in Tbilisi.
Freer writes, "This bakery has become a landmark in Kingston, and is an offshoot of a restaurant here (also with a pig-theme!) called Chez Piggy, which was started by Canadian folk-rock musician Yal Zanofsky."
Freer writes, "This bakery has become a landmark in Kingston, and is an offshoot of a restaurant here (also with a pig-theme!) called Chez Piggy, which was started by Canadian folk-rock musician Yal Zanofsky."
The postcard is a Glenn Thomas original. Thomas is a printer, sculptor, and print maker. Originally from Newark, New Jersey, Thomas has been living and working in the Netherlands since 1970. He has authored five books, The Inner Life of Martin Frost, by Paul Auster and Glenn Thomas (Mark Batty Publishers, 2008), The Painting (De Plantage Pers, 2008), Book In A Box, and Dialogues of an aging existence, a Graphic novel. More here: https://www.glennthomas.eu/about.html
Thomas writes, "The card has a reproduction of a silkscreen print I made called Puzzling Procreation, representing my complete confusion as to why we are here and why people keep making more people."
Thomas writes, "The card has a reproduction of a silkscreen print I made called Puzzling Procreation, representing my complete confusion as to why we are here and why people keep making more people."
GC Churnage returns again this year with his format of creating postcard art on foam-core. (Ibid)
About the Postcards (reprint from last year's submission): "My postcards are like smelling salts for a media-concussed culture. I want people, myself included, to wake the FUCK up. I use surrealism, subversion, juxtaposition, humor, non sequiturs, randomness, questions, among other techniques, to goad / coax / woo viewers out of their waking sleep. Sometimes, I start by collaging cut-out images on a blank postcard canvass. Sometimes, I paint a large piece of foam-core with all kinds of crazy colors and then chop it up into smaller postcard canvasses. Then add words and images, as necessary. Sometimes, I paint over collaged images. I'm still learning and experimenting with different techniques. I started making collaged postcards for family members who were away from home. They responded enthusiastically to these hand-crafted creations, so I kept at it."
About the Postcards (reprint from last year's submission): "My postcards are like smelling salts for a media-concussed culture. I want people, myself included, to wake the FUCK up. I use surrealism, subversion, juxtaposition, humor, non sequiturs, randomness, questions, among other techniques, to goad / coax / woo viewers out of their waking sleep. Sometimes, I start by collaging cut-out images on a blank postcard canvass. Sometimes, I paint a large piece of foam-core with all kinds of crazy colors and then chop it up into smaller postcard canvasses. Then add words and images, as necessary. Sometimes, I paint over collaged images. I'm still learning and experimenting with different techniques. I started making collaged postcards for family members who were away from home. They responded enthusiastically to these hand-crafted creations, so I kept at it."
Laura Knott studied environmental art at MIT’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies, on the edge of the Charles River. In 1998, she produced Worldwide Simultaneous Dance, an online work in which dancers danced in 11 countries at the same time, on the theme of PLACE - as in, “This is me, dancing where I am.” She grows food and eats it.
George Longenecker writes, "My poems have appeared in America, Bryant Literary Review, and Evening Street Review. I wanted to write something succinct enough to fit on a postcard my photo which would commemorate the many young men who perished at Normandy."
Anne Swannell writes, "A postcard poem becomes personal, to-the-point, shorter and more succinct — and not just because there isn’t much room on a postcard! Brevity happens because, since I’m writing to someone I “know,” even if it’s an imaginary someone, I can take for granted certain things that he or she understands, and therefor I don’t need to spell everything out. Because it’s a postcard, I can assume that either we have some back-ground in common or that we will have some connection in future. I’m now re-writing every poem in my latest ms. before I send it out again to seek a publisher! It doesn’t change the subject matter, it changes the stance, the occasion of utterance ... and that can now become different for each poem. In other words, the speaker of the poem need not always be me per se. Just as the imagined recipient of the postcard can change, so might the imaginary sender, and that’s a revelation, a mind-expander!"
Michael Thompson writes, "I am a Chicago-based artist who makes decorative kites for a living and who has been making and mailing fake postage stamps since 1991 in the hopes of having them returned with a cancellation. I sometimes attempt to combine my interest in collage with my philatelic activity and postcards offer the greatest opportunity to do that. I have made and mailed stamps from dozens of countries throughout the world and usually attempt to mask my activity by using blasé envelopes, but my favorite pieces are those that allow me create, what I consider, a genuine piece of mail art." https://michaelthompsonart.com/home.html
GC churnage (Ibid)
Churnage writes, "For the character-driven cards, I try to put myself into their skin at a crucial moment... what they're thinking... what they're feeling... and what they're moving toward or what they're escaping from..."
Churnage writes, "For the character-driven cards, I try to put myself into their skin at a crucial moment... what they're thinking... what they're feeling... and what they're moving toward or what they're escaping from..."
M. Kelly Peach's work is published or appearing in Entropy, Unsung Stories, Bloody Red Nose: Fifteen Fears of a Clown, Fiddlers Green Peculiar Parish Magazine, and Cheapjack Pulp. Peach is retired from the State of Michigan Department of Health and Human Services. He enjoys reading and collecting books, camping, hiking, and baking.
Peach writes, "My pen name is M. Kelly Peach. My mother's name is Rose Hebert Peach. My wife's name is Monica Luz Rivera Peach. They despised each other. Given the subject matter, the post card itself is rather ironic and the stamp doubles down on the irony. This piece would not let me sleep. I woke up around 3:00 a.m. and wrote it in one sitting. All of my work is revised multiple times. Mommy! Mommy! is an exception because I wanted to leave it as real and raw as possible."
Peach writes, "My pen name is M. Kelly Peach. My mother's name is Rose Hebert Peach. My wife's name is Monica Luz Rivera Peach. They despised each other. Given the subject matter, the post card itself is rather ironic and the stamp doubles down on the irony. This piece would not let me sleep. I woke up around 3:00 a.m. and wrote it in one sitting. All of my work is revised multiple times. Mommy! Mommy! is an exception because I wanted to leave it as real and raw as possible."
Joe Goren is an artist who has illustrated editorially, raised two children, dairy goats, and honeybees. Goren is member of Lit CLE. Her work has appeared in Toasted Cheese Literary Journal, Literary Mama, Libros Loqui, and The Ekphrastic Review. Jo is a nominee for Best of Net Anthology 2019. Twitter: @drawing4dollars
Goren writes, "I am working on an epistolary novella in flash that includes the character in the Dear Mom postcard. Every time I travel to another city no matter how small, I send postcards to family and friends. I made the Dear Mom postcards."
Goren writes, "I am working on an epistolary novella in flash that includes the character in the Dear Mom postcard. Every time I travel to another city no matter how small, I send postcards to family and friends. I made the Dear Mom postcards."
Mike Callaghan interrogates the subtlety of gesture and difference in a moment when frameworks of relationships are at once prominently visible and exhaustively hidden. Mike’s work has appeared in exhibitions globally including, the Griffin Museum of Photography, the Marin Museum of Contemporary Art, the Soho Photo Gallery, Gallery 44 and PhotoIreland. Callaghan's work has appeared in a number of publications including Zyzzyva, Der Greif, Drain, Otoliths, and The Shanghai Literary Review. Mike earned an MFA from the San Francisco art institute. This is a photo of advertising on the hoarding around a condominium construction site. Disassociated from this contact, the text potentially stimulate an existential consideration. http://www.mikecart.com/about-momentum
GC churnage (Ibid)
Churnage writes, "For the commentary cards (the Statue of Liberty and People in Gas Masks), I just tried to follow my muse. One's a commentary on the state of our broken, yet resilient country and the other's on the state of our mercenary, lawless, insane (and yes, resilient) world. Absurdism is often a necessary tool for the writer."
Churnage writes, "For the commentary cards (the Statue of Liberty and People in Gas Masks), I just tried to follow my muse. One's a commentary on the state of our broken, yet resilient country and the other's on the state of our mercenary, lawless, insane (and yes, resilient) world. Absurdism is often a necessary tool for the writer."
Christian Garduno lives & writes along the South Texas coast. He enjoys Rasta music, grilling, + sailing on cool afternoons. Mr. Garduno is usually accompanied by his beautiful wife, Nahemie, his young son, Dylan, + his pet bear-cub, Theodore Bexar.
Garduno writes, "This is a card I designed a few years back for a manuscript of original poetry. Long live the Pony Express!!!"
Garduno writes, "This is a card I designed a few years back for a manuscript of original poetry. Long live the Pony Express!!!"
Anthony Gayle is a college professor of mathematics who likes to write in his spare time. His next publication will be in the forthcoming issue of Sirocco Magazine at Georgia Southwestern State University.
The postcard is a reflection on his time teaching what many students hate to learn.
The postcard is a reflection on his time teaching what many students hate to learn.
