Samantha Malay
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"The front of the postcard shows my brother, my sister and I playing near an abandoned homestead in Onion Creek, Washington, in the spring of 1973. Our parents dismantled this cabin and built another one from old timbers and new logs. We slept in a canvas tent.
The mailbox in the image was later installed at the bottom of the mountain, where a long dirt road met the county line. My poem ‘Inland’ appears on the back of the postcard. It contains details from a dream I had about that time. It was originally published in Projector Magazine, UK, 2019. Sealed with beeswax, this postcard is a love letter to when my family was together." Note from Inverted Syntax: The postcard was created twice. On the first occasion, even tough mailed in an envelope, the postal service seemed to have lost the original one for a few months. Samantha recreated the postcard and we ended receiving both of them. |
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Samantha Malay grew up in rural northeastern Washington State, where her
family built a cabin with timbers salvaged from an abandoned homestead, hauled water from a creek, and lived without electricity. Her experiences in that time and place continue to shape her understanding of the body, memory, environment and creativity. She began collecting travel postcards from thrift shops about thirty-five years ago, intrigued by the images, the descriptions of geography and local attractions printed on the backs, and the intimacy of the handwritten messages. Her mixed- media artwork is influenced by the small physical size of the postcard format, and her poems are short, like a note that says, “Wish you were here.” She is an annual contributor to A.I.R. Gallery’s Postcard Exhibit and Fundraiser, in Brooklyn, New York, and she supports Frank Warren’s PostSecret project, as well as the Curt Teich Postcard Archives, in the Lake County Discovery Museum, in Wauconda, Illinois. She believes a postcard becomes a work of art as soon as it is mailed, granting each of us the opportunity to be artists. Samantha’s collages have been published in The Grief Diaries, Cahoodaloodaling, Phoebe: A Journal of Literature and Art, Temenos, Chaleur Magazine, Apeiron Review, Hey, I’m Alive Magazine, and Sheepshead Review. Her artwork is in the MERZ Gallery permanent collection, in Sanquhar, Scotland, and will be included in the book Collage Your Life (Storey Publishing, 2022). Samantha’s poetry recently appeared in Plainsongs (Corpus Callosum Press, winter 2022). Her poem ‘Between’ was a 2020 Pushcart Prize nominee (Shark Reef Magazine). Her chapbook Realm is forthcoming (Flying Ketchup Press, 2022). https://kolajmagazine.com/artistdirectory/samantha-malay https://thistleandhasp.wordpress.com |
