About these photographs, Melanie Faith says: "Rural architecture, Americana, folk art, and the pastoral intrigue me and inform my approach to photography and writing.  I like the inherent character of the shabby chic, the once-abandoned, and the slightly-in-disrepair. All of these photos were taken in Missouri while visiting my sister and her family last summer (save the broken bus photo, taken in my home state of Pennsylvania).  Of necessity, photography is a serendipitous, fast-on-your-feet medium. Many of these images were taken en route (I kept my trusty Minolta handy)— the tower on a trip back from Branson, the abandoned row house as well as the tumble-down, ivy-grown conductor’s station window on the outskirts of Springfield, the barns en route to a rural Renaissance Fair, and the gorilla balloon on July 3rd at a roadside stand advertising fireworks for sale. Much of my art concerns resonance—both the immediate essence of the subject as well as the echoing out of theme from a seemingly simple image.  My training as a poet informs my visual work— as both poetry and photography seek to encapsulate and elevate a white-hot moment into metaphor."

Faith is a graduate student in the Queens University of Charlotte MFA program in Creative Writing and works as a tutor at a college preparatory high school.   Her poetry chapbook, Restless: Relative Poems, was published by Foothills Publishing. In 2005, her poetry was published in UK, Canadian, and US presses, was featured on the World Poetry Radio Show (Vancouver, Canada), and earned 3rd place in a "boys/girls" themed Maison Neuve Magazine (Montreal, Canada) contest.  She was reader featured in the Wilson College Visiting Writers Series and was selected recipient of the 2006 Outstanding Young Alumnae Award.  Her poems and photography are forthcoming in Arabesques, De-Fault, Cab/Net, Armada Quarterly, The Long Islander and The Watch List.  She is currently writing a Master’s thesis of lyric narrative poetry and daydreaming of seaside getaways from her landlocked home.