INVERTED SYNTAX

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    • The Art of the Postcard
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    • Fissured Tongue Volume 4
    • Fissured Tongue Volume 3
    • Fissured Tongue Volume 2
    • Fissured Tongue Volume 1
    • Online Issue Two
    • Online Issue One
  • The Art of the Postcard
    • About The Art of the Postcard
    • Art of the Postcard Issue 3
    • Art of the Postcard Issue 2
    • Art of the Postcard Issue 1
    • We Are All Artists Exhibit >
      • Video Compilation FirehouseArt Center Postcard Exhibit
      • Firehouse Exhibitors 2022 >
        • Churnage FirehouseArt Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Daniel Staub Weinberg Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Genevieve Rose Barr Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Eva Schultz Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Samantha Malay Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • D Allen Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Hayley Harris Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Tony Peyser Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Sarah Santoni Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Julia Klatt Singer Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Kathryn Kruse Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Meg Freer Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Moira Walsh Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Stephanie Staab Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Anne Swannell Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Laura Knott Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Jo Goren Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • CR Resetarits Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Sarah Ernestine Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Stephanie Johnson Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Charles J. March III Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Emily Mosley Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Grace Desmarais Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Emily Vieweg Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Claire Lawrence Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Meca'Ayo Cole Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Andrea Rexilius Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Christian Garduno Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Salma Ahmad Caller Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Glenn Thomas Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Claire Yspol Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Michael Thompson Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Rikki Santer Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Laura Gamache Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Christine Williams Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Stephanie Beechem Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Imma Dunach Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Ginny Short Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Josh Lefkowitz Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Carolyn Adams Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
      • We Are All Artists Exhibit Guide
      • We are All Artists Submission Form Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
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    • Pushcart Prize
    • Best of the Net
    • Best Micro Fiction
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  • Sublingua 2022 Results
    • Sublingua 2020 Results
    • Sublingua 2019 Results
  • Submit
    • Sublingua Prize for Poetry
    • General Submission Guidelines
    • The Art of the Postcard
  • Store
  • The Fissured Tongue Series
    • Fissured Tongue Volume 4
    • Fissured Tongue Volume 3
    • Fissured Tongue Volume 2
    • Fissured Tongue Volume 1
    • Online Issue Two
    • Online Issue One
  • The Art of the Postcard
    • About The Art of the Postcard
    • Art of the Postcard Issue 3
    • Art of the Postcard Issue 2
    • Art of the Postcard Issue 1
    • We Are All Artists Exhibit >
      • Video Compilation FirehouseArt Center Postcard Exhibit
      • Firehouse Exhibitors 2022 >
        • Churnage FirehouseArt Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Daniel Staub Weinberg Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Genevieve Rose Barr Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Eva Schultz Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Samantha Malay Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • D Allen Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Hayley Harris Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Tony Peyser Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Sarah Santoni Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Julia Klatt Singer Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Kathryn Kruse Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Meg Freer Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Moira Walsh Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Stephanie Staab Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Anne Swannell Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Laura Knott Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Jo Goren Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • CR Resetarits Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Sarah Ernestine Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Stephanie Johnson Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Charles J. March III Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Emily Mosley Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Grace Desmarais Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Emily Vieweg Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Claire Lawrence Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Meca'Ayo Cole Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Andrea Rexilius Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Christian Garduno Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Salma Ahmad Caller Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Glenn Thomas Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Claire Yspol Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Michael Thompson Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Rikki Santer Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Laura Gamache Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Christine Williams Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Stephanie Beechem Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Imma Dunach Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Ginny Short Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Josh Lefkowitz Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
        • Carolyn Adams Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
      • We Are All Artists Exhibit Guide
      • We are All Artists Submission Form Firehouse Art Center Postcard Exhibit
  • Nominations & Awards
    • Pushcart Prize
    • Best of the Net
    • Best Micro Fiction
  • About Us
    • Masthead
    • More >
      • Interviews
      • Blog
      • Resources >
        • Writing resources
        • Mile-High MFA >
          • Mile-High MFA Writers
          • Mile-High MFA Website
          • Faculty News & Interviews
    • Our Contributors
    • Mission

4th Annual
Art of the
Postcard

Picture
“THE WORLD BEFORE US IS A POSTCARD, AND I IMAGINE THE STORY WE ARE WRITING ON IT.”  ― MARY E. PEARSON

EDITORIAL NOTE 

from Allissa
Picture
A postcard is a hope to be heard, a hand-held call to a friend, to a lover, to a mom, to an opposition, a loss, a loved one. 

The Art of the Postcard series is a call to everyone. It is a chance to share what stirs you, those open-heart moments that beg to be breathed out into the world in paint, in words, in tape, ink, photos, string, paper. 

These postcards represent unfiltered art. This art is not audited, not hand selected or panel picked. We are, once again, honored to receive your art and to share it with our readers. 

Whoever it is that you wanted to reach, I hope this postcards finds them. 



​Featured Postcards

Lucia & Kenward from
Chip Livingston 

The Postcard images are courtesy of the Kenward Gray Elmslie Irrevocable Trust.
The Birthday Postcards 
About the featured postcard:  

Churnage

Discover More POSTCARDS

Churnage


CHURNAGE "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 canvas. Sometimes, I paint a large piece of foam-core with all kinds of crazy colors and then chop it up into smaller postcard canvases. 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
​

Ginny Short 

About the postcard Ginny writes, "

Allissa Hertz​

​

​Salma Ahmad Caller

Salma Ahmad Caller

Andrea Rexilius


Adria Bernardi 

​
Imelda Hinojosa 
​




Stephanie Beechem

Imma Duñach

​


Bill Wolak

CM Sears


Grace Desmarais​ self-publishes auto-bio and middle-grade comics. Grace enjoys exploring a variety of genres including memoir, historical narrative and fantasy with her playful style.

Grace's work has been featured in a variety of anthologies including the Votes for Women Anthology (to be published Fall 2020) and Why Faith Anthology (Spring 2019). Her editorial work has been featured in magazines, including Bright Lite Magazine and Hazel Magazine. Grace's in graphic medicine has also been recognized by the Coalition of Texans with Disabilities with a Pen 2 Paper Nomination in Graphic Literature.

Her goal is to be a published graphic novelist with a committed comics publisher where she hopes to make comics about life and witches.

You can also find Grace Desmarais in the Women Who Draw archive.

Grace writes, "In 2017, my best friend and ex-boyfriend took his own life. In 2020, his father took his own life. I have been struggling personally with mental health my whole life. So this was a postcard about grief. The ephemeral quality of postcards offered an opportunity for me to feel safe sharing my grief with stranger in a way that I often struggle with my writing and illustration work.
This postcard is a Vermeer Painting that I had been saving from a trip to Paris.The text on the front says "I'll never forget to say 'I love you' ever again." This postcard was sent from Brooklyn NY, USA."

Bill Smith



​​


Amy-Sarah Marshall, who graduated with an MFA in Poetry from George Mason University, has published poems in the Wisconsin Review, So to Speak, and other journals. She has worked as a web writer and editor, content strategist, and founding president of the Charlottesville Pride Community Network, an LGBTQ+ community nonprofit. A Los Angeles native, Amy-Sarah grew up in a religious theater cult and now lives in Charlottesville, Virginia with her wife, 2 children, 2 dogs, and 2 cats.

Amy-Sarah writes, " 
I drew an abstract pinkish design on the front (you can maybe see koi or aliens in it). The postcard is signed by Manny and comes from Charlottesville, Virginia, USA. It's a letter-poem that takes place in an autoshop and is meant to express the exposure one can feel when estranged and longing for someone who truly knows you."



Deborah LeFalle is a former college educator who started writing in her retirement. Besides writing she enjoys being involved in the arts and humanities, digging into her family's past, and spending time outdoors communing with nature. Poetry is the genre of writing she is drawn to most, with inspiration for her poems often stemming from personal experiences. Her work has appeared in various journals and magazines, and she has authored two chapbooks, Worthy (2017) and Little Suites (2019). Ms. LeFalle lives a simple, gratitude-filled life in California's Bay Area.

Deborah writes, "The postcard is a colorful print of a purple-striped tiger (artist unknown) that came as part of an art activity kit I purchased for my granddaughter years ago. Continuing the theme on the backside of the card, I wrote my greeting in purple ink."


Charles J. March III is an asexual, neurodivergent Navy hospital corpsman veteran who is currently trying to live an eclectic life with an interesting array of recovering creatures in Orange County, CA. His various works have appeared in or are forthcoming from Evergreen Review, Atlas Obscura, Litro, Chicago Tribune, L.A. Times, Lalitamba, 3:AM Magazine, Ink Sweat & Tears, Fleas on the Dog, Dink Press/Problématique, Queen Mob’s Teahouse, The Recusant, Taco Bell Quarterly, Storm Cellar, Terror House Press, Horror Sleaze Trash, Harbinger Asylum, Young Mag, Madness Muse Press, Maudlin House, Misery Tourism, BlazeVOX, Blood Tree Literature (prize), The Babel Tower Notice Board, Bareknuckle Poet, Anti-Heroin Chic, Synchronized Chaos, The Beatnik Cowboy, Points in Case, Expat Press, Stinkwaves, Young Ravens Literary Review, The Writing Disorder, Literary Orphans, Centre for Experimental Ontology, Otoliths, Oddball Magazine, et al. Links to his pieces can be found on LinkedIn and SoundCloud.

Charles writes, "This shark postcard should be coming from San Juan Capistrano, California, which is of course in the USA.


I’d been getting into mail art recently, and am myself a fan of the lost art of letter writing, so when I saw this postcard submission call, I knew I had to participate. I then almost immediately drove to the grocery store specifically to purchase a postcard.

Upon arriving, they weren’t where I’d normally seen them before, so I searched for about 20 minutes before finding them boxed up in the back along with other obscure, miscellaneous ephemera and such.

None of the postcards were catching my eye, until I saw the eye of the shark. Then once I read the dark humor caption on the front, I was hooked.

Pun intended.

I tried to match the “art” on the back with the spirit and colors of the front, and I thought the upside down tourists falling into the water was very fitting for a publication called Inverted Syntax.

And I kind of just went with some other sinister stream of consciousness embellishments to further the semi-humorous, cathartic man eating vibe."
Rikki Santer's work has appeared in various publications including Ms. Magazine, Poetry East, Slab, Slipstream, Crab Orchard Review, RHINO, Grimm, Hotel Amerika and The Main Street Rag. Santer's work has received many honors including five Pushcart and three Ohioana book award nominations as well as a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Her eighth collection, Drop Jaw, inspired by the art of ventriloquism, was published this spring by NightBallet Press.

Rikki writes, This card comes from the bakery of imagination where my Home Virtuoso Plus Breadmaker machine resides with me in Columbus, Ohio.

Ailbhe Pascal is a writer based in occupied Coaquanock (“Philadelphia”). Their storytelling is in the tradition of queer witchcraft and political poetry. Find them writing about crip healing, cackling about their latest mistake-success, or sharing moon meals with friends.
​
Ailbhe writes about each postcard 


"1. A postcard made in a fundraising series for the Standing Rock Sioux Water Defenders Camp back in 2018 now has my words of celebration as the Dakota Access Pipeline, resisted by the Standing Rock Camp, has finally been halted. Postcards used to be a way of getting out the news, and I like the idea of sharing good news in this time of struggle and plague.

2. A postcard from an independent bookshop I have actually never been to--what better way to address Stranger? I bring Stranger into relationship with me through a desperate request.

3. A postcard I made by hand as part of a local art exchange. We were encouraged to make stamps with household materials, so I used boiled beets and then mailed 20 versions out to neighbors. The writing here is in also a sample of what I sent out to these different strangers."

Discover more Postcards
​2nd Annual Art of the Postcard

Picture

  • Start Your Visit Here 
  • Ambiguity & Paradox
  • It's Not Like Insta
  • What the Fluxus?
  • Scavenger Hunt
  • More
<
>
Picture
Picture
(text-based version)
Browse, Immerse, Create, Submit


​The postcard's complex power lies in its hybridity — in its ability to illuminate, through brevity and art, the ephemera of a life. These postcards in the magazine’s possession collectively reveal glimpses of the story of the world, of our lives, in the granular, in the moment.
On display here at Firehouse Art Center, you’ll find postcards about lost mothers, and lovers, loneliness and illness, poems and stories about how we live, questions about how we should live — addressed to real and imagined people. They are representative of our human experiences; from art and writing that ranges from the prosaic to the extraordinary — postcards that are absorbed in the social and emotional, from poignant to pointless missives, to none at all.

Where to Start: This curated exhibit begins on the north wall with vintage postcards and postcards that our contributors purchased, culminating in originally created postcards on the​ opposite wall.

Handle Cards: As you walk around, you are invited to handle postcards in sleeves — any card that is not hanging in a frame. Take your time and engage with all their elements, from the image to the message.

QR Code: Open your photo app on your device, hover over the museum label’s QR code, and find out more about each contributor. Codes with a video or audio message will have a play button next to the contributor’s name.

Immerse yourself in this postcard collection. Allow yourself to be enchanted by the postcard's complex power to illuminate lives, plights, thoughts, visions, dreams of anyone, of any status,
in any syntax.

Submit: You are invited, at the end, to join this collective by creating your own postcard for publication
consideration in Inverted Syntax’s The Art of the Postcard series. You may submit it through the mail or leave your postcard at the museum to become a part of the exhibit. 
Exhibit Submission
  • Start Your Visit Here 
  • Ambiguity & Paradox
  • It's Not Like Insta
  • What the Fluxus?
  • Scavenger Hunt
  • More
<
>
Picture
Picture
(text-based version)
Browse, Immerse, Create, Submit


​The postcard's complex power lies in its hybridity — in its ability to illuminate, through brevity and art, the ephemera of a life. These postcards in the magazine’s possession collectively reveal glimpses of the story of the world, of our lives, in the granular, in the moment.
On display here at Firehouse Art Center, you’ll find postcards about lost mothers, and lovers, loneliness and illness, poems and stories about how we live, questions about how we should live — addressed to real and imagined people. They are representative of our human experiences; from art and writing that ranges from the prosaic to the extraordinary — postcards that are absorbed in the social and emotional, from poignant to pointless missives, to none at all.

Where to Start: This curated exhibit begins on the north wall with vintage postcards and postcards that our contributors purchased, culminating in originally created postcards on the​ opposite wall.

Handle Cards: As you walk around, you are invited to handle postcards in sleeves — any card that is not hanging in a frame. Take your time and engage with all their elements, from the image to the message.

QR Code: Open your photo app on your device, hover over the museum label’s QR code, and find out more about each contributor. Codes with a video or audio message will have a play button next to the contributor’s name.

Immerse yourself in this postcard collection. Allow yourself to be enchanted by the postcard's complex power to illuminate lives, plights, thoughts, visions, dreams of anyone, of any status,
in any syntax.

Submit: You are invited, at the end, to join this collective by creating your own postcard for publication
consideration in Inverted Syntax’s The Art of the Postcard series. You may submit it through the mail or leave your postcard at the museum to become a part of the exhibit. 
Exhibit Submission
Picture

​The Paradox of the Postcard

​In a chaotic and fast-paced world, small-scale pieces briefly freeze time, provide us a place of retreat where we can live in these real and imagined worlds. From its size, material, and shape, to its edges, to the at-times illegible  handwriting, the nature of the postcard is an accessible and intimate form of art that invites you into its world, to slow down and engage with its hybrid messaging.

With its unthreatening presence, the postcard seemingly puts us, the audience, in control, which also, paradoxically, stimulates for some of us a sense of unease as we engage in the often weird imagistic and literary realities created by others.

​The unease experienced is not an unusual one when engaging with small or miniature art.

In its smallness, the postcard awakens in each of us, our own vulnerability to external controls.
Picture

​The Ambiguous Nature of the Postcard


With a postcard, we can step into the art and literary world as creators, without judgement or pressure, knowing the postcard we make is certain to engage the viewer’s senses.
​
How can we be certain?

Because its size requires brevity, the nature of the postcard can be an ambiguous thing. Whether through the card selected, created, or text added, a postcard often captures the fragmentary, ambiguous nature of our thoughts and feelings.

As a result, its presence
  is often enigmatic, playing on the curiosity of the viewer’s need to know the unknown.

And now, here you are, engaging with these objects—imagined worlds and cryptic meanings beating in the palm of your hand.
Picture
Can’t I Just Post About it on Insta?
​

How often do you get the urge to make something? Chances are you will probably make something at least once a day. Whether it’s an Instagram post, the filtering of an image, journaling, or your favorite meal, we all have a desire to make things.
For postcard creators, there is often a spontaneity, creativity, and therapy experienced from putting cards together. You may be thinking that posting on social media is the digital equivalent of creating a postcard, however, studies show that working with your hands, with actual objects, is a catalyst to positively altering brain chemistry.

“When we move and we engage in activities, we change the neurochemistry of  our brain in ways that a drug can change the neurochemistry of our brain,”

— Kelly Lambert, neuroscientist at the University of Richmond

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/handiwork-how-busy-hands-can-alter-our-brain-chemistry/
Picture
What the Fluxus? The Postcard Art Movement
Inverted Syntax and The Art of Postcard take inspiration from Mail Art and Fluxus, which emerged as an antiestablishment practice, a way to defy art and art venues by using experimental art forms. Similarly, when Inverted Syntax magazine was born, it
was out of a disenchantment with the elitist attitude they perceive dominating the art and literary world.

Declared a real artist movement in the 1950s, Mail Art was intended as a way to build a global community by aesthetically engaging with other artists and writers, with a focus on the act of collaborating and exchanging art through the mail.
​
Mail Art’s creative process’s only guiding principle is that it should be created art that fits in envelopes and sent through the postal service. The postcard, as a result, has become its most commonly used form.
Let's play a game. See if you can locate the following: 
  1. A contributor who sends postcards with fake stamps
  2.  a failed marriage
  3. a friend's suicide
  4. Dorothy in Oz?
  5. A series of cautionary tales
  6. A card from France ... what does it mean?
  7. Great aunt Esther dancing 
  8. Cards by an accomplished Denver poet
  9. Dear mom cards
  10. Inverted syntax editors' postcards
  11. A postcard referencing the the February 2021 insurrection ​
  12. Two postcards about bread
  13. A collection of "smelling salts"
  14. A contributor who lived in this place on the card

Curation rationale:
In between the postcards are cards that contain guided information. They are the ones with the Inverted Syntax logo. They will help with these questions:
  1. What does Mailart have to do with Inverted Syntax and the curation of this exhibit?
  2. Why are the poles green and the shelves slanted?​

Take a guess at this:
Why are some of  the purchased cards in wood posts placed really high or really low?
SubMit your Postcard
Visit the STore for Print Issues
Picture

​The Paradox of the Postcard

​In a chaotic and fast-paced world, small-scale pieces briefly freeze time, provide us a place of retreat where we can live in these real and imagined worlds. From its size, material, and shape, to its edges, to the at-times illegible  handwriting, the nature of the postcard is an accessible and intimate form of art that invites you into its world, to slow down and engage with its hybrid messaging.

With its unthreatening presence, the postcard seemingly puts us, the audience, in control, which also, paradoxically, stimulates for some of us a sense of unease as we engage in the often weird imagistic and literary realities created by others.

​The unease experienced is not an unusual one when engaging with small or miniature art.

In its smallness, the postcard awakens in each of us, our own vulnerability to external controls.
Picture

​The Ambiguous Nature of the Postcard


With a postcard, we can step into the art and literary world as creators, without judgement or pressure, knowing the postcard we make is certain to engage the viewer’s senses.
​
How can we be certain?

Because its size requires brevity, the nature of the postcard can be an ambiguous thing. Whether through the card selected, created, or text added, a postcard often captures the fragmentary, ambiguous nature of our thoughts and feelings.

As a result, its presence
  is often enigmatic, playing on the curiosity of the viewer’s need to know the unknown.

And now, here you are, engaging with these objects—imagined worlds and cryptic meanings beating in the palm of your hand.
Picture
Can’t I Just Post About it on Insta?
​

How often do you get the urge to make something? Chances are you will probably make something at least once a day. Whether it’s an Instagram post, the filtering of an image, journaling, or your favorite meal, we all have a desire to make things.
For postcard creators, there is often a spontaneity, creativity, and therapy experienced from putting cards together. You may be thinking that posting on social media is the digital equivalent of creating a postcard, however, studies show that working with your hands, with actual objects, is a catalyst to positively altering brain chemistry.

“When we move and we engage in activities, we change the neurochemistry of  our brain in ways that a drug can change the neurochemistry of our brain,”

— Kelly Lambert, neuroscientist at the University of Richmond

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/handiwork-how-busy-hands-can-alter-our-brain-chemistry/
Picture
What the Fluxus? The Postcard Art Movement
Inverted Syntax and The Art of Postcard take inspiration from Mail Art and Fluxus, which emerged as an antiestablishment practice, a way to defy art and art venues by using experimental art forms. Similarly, when Inverted Syntax magazine was born, it
was out of a disenchantment with the elitist attitude they perceive dominating the art and literary world.

Declared a real artist movement in the 1950s, Mail Art was intended as a way to build a global community by aesthetically engaging with other artists and writers, with a focus on the act of collaborating and exchanging art through the mail.
​
Mail Art’s creative process’s only guiding principle is that it should be created art that fits in envelopes and sent through the postal service. The postcard, as a result, has become its most commonly used form.
Let's play a game. See if you can locate the following: 
  1. A contributor who sends postcards with fake stamps
  2.  a failed marriage
  3. a friend's suicide
  4. Dorothy in Oz?
  5. A series of cautionary tales
  6. A card from France ... what does it mean?
  7. Great aunt Esther dancing 
  8. Cards by an accomplished Denver poet
  9. Dear mom cards
  10. Inverted syntax editors' postcards
  11. A postcard referencing the the February 2021 insurrection ​
  12. Two postcards about bread
  13. A collection of "smelling salts"
  14. A contributor who lived in this place on the card

Curation rationale:
In between the postcards are cards that contain guided information. They are the ones with the Inverted Syntax logo. They will help with these questions:
  1. What does Mailart have to do with Inverted Syntax and the curation of this exhibit?
  2. Why are the poles green and the shelves slanted?​

Take a guess at this:
Why are some of  the purchased cards in wood posts placed really high or really low?
SubMit your Postcard
Visit the STore for Print Issues

Get To Know The Inverted Syntax Team

  • Curator 
  • The Editorial Team
<
>
Picture
​Get to know the curator of "WE ARE ALL ARTISTS" exhibit  
​

Nawal Nader-French (she/her) is a Lebanese -- Ghanaian mixed-race writer, editor, and educator. Before immigrating to the United States and landing in Colorado almost thirty years ago, Nawal grew up in Accra, Beirut, and lived in Hamburg, London, and Hawaii. Her first book A record of how the mother’s textile became sound will be published by NOEMI Press (March 2023) . Her second manuscript an improvised song is likely to come apart and scatter in infinite directions was a finalist in University of Pittsburgh's 2021 Center for African American Poetry and Poetics Book Prize and the 2021 Autumn House Press Full-Length Poetry Contest judged by Eileen Myles. Her poems appear in RHINO, Fence, Texas Review, Bayou Magazine, Grist Journal, TheElephants.net and elsewhere. Her poem “That I remember” was nominated Sundress Publications' 2017 Best of the Net. Her now disassembled manuscript, A Hemmed Remnant was a finalist in the 2018 Ron Sillerman Prize for African Poets through the University of Nebraska Press and a finalist in the 2018 Brigham Award through Lost Roads. Nawal has an MFA in Creative Writing in Poetry from the Mile-High MFA at Regis University, a BA in English with secondary education from University of Northern Colorado, and an MA in Curriculum and Instruction. In the past, she taught secondary English, authored high school curriculum and graduate professional development courses, was the Instructional Coordinator of eLearning in St. Vrain Valley Schools, and an adjunct instructor in Front Range Community College’s Department of English. Nawal is the founding editor-in-chief of Inverted Syntax.

EDITORS:

​
FOUNDER & EDITOR-IN-CHIEF   
 
NAWAL NADER-FRENCH

ASSOCIATE EDITOR
JESICA DAVIS                               

ASSOCIATE EDITOR 
ALLISSA HERTZ     

ASSOCIATE EDITOR
MELANIE MERLE  

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT
GINNY SHORT

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT
YESICA MIRAMBEAUX

READERS:

REGIS FACULTY READER

TRACI  JONES (Fiction only)

TED DOWNUM (Fiction only)
ANDRÉ O HOILETTE
MIRANDA MARTINEZ-HERBERT
JASON MASINO
ASHLEY BUNN 



ADVISORY BOARD:
TRACI  JONES
​ANDREA REXILIUS
ERIC BAUS      
 ​
PREVIOUS VOLUNTEERS:

ISSUE THREE EDITORIAL ASSISTANT

JASON MASINO

ISSUE TWO EDITORIAL ASSISTANT
AND SCHUSTER

EVENTS & PROMOTIONS CONSULTANT (2018-2020)
HILLARY LEFTWICH

SOCIAL MEDIA MANAGER (2020-2021)
ASHLEY HOWELL-BUNN

PREVIOUS INTERNS:

SUMMER 2019

MARY FAYE WETTERER

SPRING 2019
M. BUI
CLARE HARNSBERGER
LUCY FINDLEY

PREVIOUS EDITORS (2018)
ASHLEY SPURGEON
KATERI KRAMER
STEPHANIE VESSELY  
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