INVERTED SYNTAX

  • Sublingua 2022 Results
    • Sublingua 2020 Results
    • Sublingua 2019 Results
  • Submit
    • Sublingua Prize for Poetry >
      • Sublingua Writing Retreat Award
    • General Submission Guidelines
    • The Art of the Postcard
  • Store
  • The Fissured Tongue Series
    • Fissured Tongue Volume 5
    • 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
  • Sublingua 2022 Results
    • Sublingua 2020 Results
    • Sublingua 2019 Results
  • Submit
    • Sublingua Prize for Poetry >
      • Sublingua Writing Retreat Award
    • General Submission Guidelines
    • The Art of the Postcard
  • Store
  • The Fissured Tongue Series
    • Fissured Tongue Volume 5
    • 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

  • Video Message
  • More
<
>
​Salma Ahmad Caller is a British-Egyptian artist whose practice involves creating an imagery of body and identity across profound cultural divides, contradictory mythologies, processes of exoticisation. The legacy of colonialism is a cross-generational transmission of ideas, traumas, bodies and misconceptions. With a Masters in Art History and Theory, a background in pharmacology, and teaching cross-cultural perspectives at Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, she is now an independent artist and writer.
​
​Salma Ahmad Caller's postcards are a collection of  seven postcards titled “Seven Cautionary Tales.” They are a mixed-media collage—using her own photography with projection on old colonial postcards from Egypt, magazine fragments, Japanese Inks, Watercolor, Graphite, Gold dust, 2020.

Salma Ahmad Caller is a British-Egyptian artist whose practice involves creating an imagery of body and identity across profound cultural divides, contradictory mythologies, processes of exoticisation. The legacy of colonialism is a cross-generational transmission of ideas, traumas, bodies and misconceptions. With a Masters in Art History and Theory, a background in pharmacology, and teaching cross-cultural perspectives at Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford, she is now an independent artist and writer.

Andrea Rexilius

Picture
Picture
Picture
Picture
mixed-media collage & thread on museum-purchased postcards
2022, USA, sent in envelope
​Nothing noted on reverse 
  • Video Message
  • About
  • Postcard Workshop
<
>
Picture
Andrea Rexilius is the author of the poetry collections: Sister Urn (Sidebrow Books, Spring 2019), New Organism: Essais (Letter Machine Editions, 2014), Half of What They Carried Flew Away (Letter Machine Editions, 2012), and To Be Human Is To Be A Conversation (Rescue Press, 2011), as well as the chapbooks, Afterworld (above/ground press, 2020), Séance (Coconut Books, 2014), and To Be Human (Horseless Press, 2010). She earned a B.A. in English from Sonoma State University (2002), an M.F.A. in Poetry from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2005), and a Ph.D. in Literature & Creative Writing from the University of Denver (2010). Andrea is Program Director for the Mile-High MFA in Creative Writing at Regis University.

Andrea's collages are published in Inverted Syntax Print Issue One, the cover art for Issue Two, and the cover art for our online feature, Fissured Tongue's main page.
Her poetry is featured in our online issue and in Print issue 1.

Create your own collage postcards with Andrea Rexilius!

Picture
In partnership with "The Art of The Postcard" presented by Inverted Syntax.

Multimedia Collage Postcards: What Asks Us to Be Formed?

Anni Albers writes, "How do we choose our specific material, our means of communication? Accidentally. Something speaks to us, a sound, a touch, hardness or softness, it catches us and asks us to be formed.” 

In this participatory craft seminar, we will discuss collage techniques, “our means of communication” and determine “what speaks to us” aesthetically. We will also create our own collage postcards.


* Some materials will be provided by the Firehouse, but participants should bring postcards to transform, as well as materials to cut-up for their collage (magazines, old photos, scrap paper…), scissors, tape, glue, and any other elements to add to their multimedia collage postcards (markers, paint, thread, fabric…).

Adria Bernardi 
  • About the Postcards
  • More 
<
>
​Hello,
These two postcards—the one of an armor-wearing dog and the one of two empty Adirondack
chairs on a pier—were in a drawer for many years along with many other postcards. The first
was purchased when my sons were young boys and we would go to visit the Higgins Armory
Museum[1] in Worcester, Massachusetts; the other was a postcard from a summer family vacation
in Vermont.
I didn’t send either postcard to anyone at the time of purchase and I didn’t send the postcards to
anyone during all those the intervening years either. When I was looking through all of the
postcards on hand to write a message to an imagined recipient, the date was February 4, 2021,
almost one month after the attack on the Capitol and one more winter day during this ongoing
pandemic. There were other postcards that spoke to me that day but these were the two that
prompted me to start writing. The postcard of antique armor worn by a dog, with its elaborate
headdress including the very tall feathers, yielded associations with the viciousness of the attack
dog and the images of the insurrectionists who wore their own contemporary versions of armor.
In writing that postcard, the word that had most resonance was marauder, which is derived from
the French marault for beggar, mendicant, felon. This word appears in Montaigne’s essay, De
l’exercitation[2] (meaning, not physical exertion or exercising as we would define it today, but, rather,
the exercising of the practices or habits that inform self-reflection, the attending to the inner life,
ethics, morality, the essence and space of the soul, and the exercising of those habits in the living
life in the moment in which death approaches.) The reference, in Chapter 6 of Book II of the
Essais, appears in the form of an epithet, “ce mauart de”, which is applied to the brutal and
despotic Roman emperor, Caligula:

Canius Julius noble Romain, de vertu et fermeté singuliere, ayant esté condamné à la mort
par ce marault de Caligula . . .
(Julius Canus, a noble Roman, of singular constancy and virtue, having been condemned to
die by that worthless fellow Caligula . . .)[2] [see pdf below for footnotes]


In sitting with the photograph of the two empty chairs on the pier in the rain, I felt--
physiologically—how much I missed seeing long-time acquaintances and friends. I understood
then that, in the dealing and coping and managing and living within a pandemic, I had not, until
that point, allowed myself to experience the loss of companionability and conversation.
Adria Bernardi
Thursday, January 20, 2022
Nashville, Tennessee
Picture
Adria Bernardi is a writer and translator whose publications include an oral history, a collection of essays, a collection of short stories, and two novels. Her eight translations from the Italian include the prose of Gianni Celati and the poetry of Tonino Guerra and Raffaello Baldini. She has been awarded the 1999 Bakeless Prize for Fiction, the 2000 Drue Heinz Literature Prize, and the 2007 Raiziss/DePalchi Translation Award. She was awarded the 2021 FC2 Catherine Doctorow Innovative Fiction Prize for her novel, Benefit Street, which will be published by The University of Alabama Press in 2022.

Read "Palladian" published in Inverted Syntax's Fissured Tongue 






Imelda Hinojosa
​Learn more about Imelda’s art here 
https://www.artworkbyimelda.com​ 



Stephanie Beechem
Stephanie Beechem is a writer, researcher, and snail mail aficionado living and working in Oakland, California.
My postcard is coming from Oakland, CA and my favorite USPS collection box, which sits within smell-wafting distance of a small neighborhood bakery. On the front is an illustration of an open-mouthed alligator and the words 'Drop in any time.'


Imma Duñach
Picture
Postcards are part of our memory, frequently reminders from places briefly visited. We filed, classified and look at them to remember. Nowadays they have been replaced for thousands of digital images, but we still can find those pieces of memory in the flea markets.
Imma (@lalimalimonart) begins to develop her work digging in her grandparents archive, reviewing those highly remembered trips from the sixties. At present her collection also includes old postcards collected from different places.
Through interventions with needlework, thread, and in some occasion’s watercolor or collage, the postcards are meant to change their original meaning.
https://www.artaviso.com/profile-member/?uid=4003 


Bill Wolak

CM Sears





​​





Discover more Postcards
​2nd Annual Art of the Postcard

Picture
  • 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  

Get To Know The Inverted Syntax Team

  • 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
Picture

FISSURED TONGUE SERIES 
print issues
​art of the postcard
blog
   About
    ​Masthead
    Submit 
    Subscribe
​
    Awards
Contact 
Join Our Team
​Resources
Picture
© COPYRIGHT 2018-2023 ​INVERTED SYNTAX PRESS LLC.  ​
​ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
P.O. BOX 2044, LONGMONT, COLORADO, 80502 , USA  PHONE: 970. 614. 5774