Postcard Fictions

Since the 1930s, the friendly glow of a neon motel "vacancy" sign has signaled a long anticipated break for the road weary motorist. The essential aim of the motel is to provide convenient, comfortable and affordable accommodation for exhausted travelers. Yet, despite their image as places of wholesome reliability, run by proprietors of strong moral fiber -- with a courtesy bible in each room -- motels have earned a reputation as the venue of choice for people seeking a discreet rendezvous. With advertisements declaring the availability of "hourly rates," J. Edgar Hoover, in 1940, labeled motels as "dens of vice and corruption."

In Postcard Fictions, Andrew Valko captures this seamier side of motel life in vivid detail. This series of paintings, hyper realistic images of motels glow and beckon eerily from the side of the highway. In Valko's motel rooms, people are engaged in various solitary activities: a scantily clad woman watches television while her companion sleeps; another woman takes nude pictures of herself, scattering polaroids all over the bed; still another woman sits in her lingerie with her back to the viewer as she watches Snow White on the television. A disturbing psychological undercurrent inhabits Valko's motels both inside and out.

The alienation and loneliness of Valko's paintings is captured strikingly in the accompanying short story by Michelle Berry. Known for her complex psychological narratives, Berry weaves a disturbing tale of two motel inhabitants that captures the unsettling events of life at the side of the highway.

Andrew Valko was born in Prague. He studied woodblock painting in Japan and shows his work in Taipei. He has contributed to group exhibitions in Seattle, California, New York and Boston. He was invited to the Royal Academy of Arts in 1994 and a travelling exhibition of his work is slated to begin in 2001. His painting Movie Nights was reproduced in the New Yorker in 1999 to accompany a story by Salman Rushdie. He lives in Winnipeg.

Michelle Berry was born in California, and grew up in Victoria, B.C.. She is the author of two short story collections, How to Get There from Here and Margaret Lives in the Basement and her new novel What We Want. She lives in Toronto.