Tag: Technique: Collage

Covid (The Tower)

~ Liz A ~ 8 Comments

Note: this post was originally titled “Apocalypse”

I knew The Tower would be a challenge from the get go …

trying to imagine how to portray total ruin in the midst of the plenty that is our fortunate lot in life.

When the only thing I dreaded about the tower at the Wildflower Center was the vertigo that came with the one and only time I ventured up into it …

tower

But over the three months that I’ve worked on the Texas Tarot, The Tower has taken on new meaning.

And now I wonder how was it that I chose to save this bookcover of all things? Seven years ago …

Let alone the foreboding Red Plane Tree by Steel Stillman …

 

  • 78 Degrees: When the Tower appears it is necessary to remember that it can lead to freedom … clearing away some situation that has built up to intolerable pressure …
  • Kitchen Table Tarot: it’s about the universe pulling the rug out from under you … and a huge lack of control … this is going to be hard, but …
  • The Creative Tarot: the Tower asks us: What needs to be destroyed in order to be rebuilt?

Coming as it does after the Knight of Wands, this card seems like a call to action, which is ironic given our confinement during the Covid quarantine.

So, as civil structures break down all around us, I choose to look to the light breaking in the distance, to the sure and steady arrival of spring, and always, always, to the sea …

Likewise to this prophetic essay by Surnai Malloy, posted by Grace on Windthread in February, with its imagery of picking up the bricks, one by one, and creating anew.

And lastly, to this fairy tale for the future …

Be the change you wish to see in the world (Knight of Wands)

~ Liz A ~ 8 Comments

The Texas Tarot evolved in fits and starts. The first and easiest pass was determining what creatures would populate the Major Arcana. Next came the Minor Arcana court cards (Pages, Knights, Queens and Kings), and then the Ace through Ten Minor Arcana last of all (Wands, Pentacles, Swords and Cups).

Working my way through the tarot deck in a random series of draws, I’ve made tweaks to some of my original assumptions, but none more than the Wands court cards. The notebook in which I put my ideas has so many scratch marks in the Wands court that I literally had to start over. And irony abounds, as I ended up where I began: with songbirds.

Fortunately, the tarot deck waited patiently for me to sort my way through. It was only yesterday when I finally drew the first of the four Wands court cards, the Knight …

Wands12

  • 78 Degrees: he represents eagerness, action, movement for its own sake … as he tries to fly in every direction at once (oh boy, can I ever relate to that)
  • Kitchen Table Tarot: everyone loves this guy
  • The Creative Tarot: an overwhelming inferno of all that fire represents: passion, creativity, desire, and, yes, anger … [which] can be a source of inspiration and a way of creating a better world

Brilliantly colored Painted Buntings were often visible from my stitching window back in the Hill Country. Never still for long, their plumage would catch my eye, causing me to get to my feet as I tried to catch another glimpse. Hence the windowed backdrop for this card/collage …

From now on, the Knight of Wands will be my personal symbol for the potential of these Covid times, the fire-y anger that can lead to creating a better world.

Blowin’ in the wind (Seven of Pentacles)

~ Liz A ~ 8 Comments

The Seven of Pentacles was and is a frustrating card …

Pents07

Texas Tarot Pentacles are grasses and shrubs, so I planned on using Mexican Feathergrass.  We had so many at the Hill Country house … beyond counting, as Don endlessly propagated and transplanted them. And yet, when I went to find a picture I came up empty-handed. Well, not exactly. I did find a few images, but the grasses looked bedraggled or bestilled, not at all the free-flowing image of windblown beauty that I had in mind. Until at last, I settled for this picture of Mealy Blue Sage, with a lone feathergrass to the right …

feather grass

It gave me …

  • 78 Degrees: a moment to look back on with satisfaction
  • Kitchen Table Tarot: this card about hard work and waiting for that work to become something tangible … which can be annoying for those who are impatient (ahem)
  • The Creative Tarot: it can be difficult to see the virtue of sitting on something for a while

until I realize once again, it was worth the time, the effort, the waiting.

We’re all becoming experts at waiting in these Covid times.

Today the wind is blowing, a day when the feathergrasses would have been in their glory. Free-flowing, yet firmly anchored in the rocky ground. A reward for much hard work, when you’re willing to wait.

As I riffled through the bookcover boxes, my eye sought imagery that conjured wind, finding it in bits and pieces of a Klee, a Munch, and a Taos landscape, although the artist’s name escaped me. Into which I nestled the lone feathergrass …

remembering so many others.