The Fool - Samantha Bares - sbares95@gamil.com - @samthebare
The Fool card is associated with innocence, spontaneity, and the desire for adventure. The Fool is optimistic toward their journey and all of the opportunities that lie ahead of them in life. However, The Fool may also be interpreted as reckless in their approach due to their lack of planning or apprehension. Dealing with anxiety, I tend to imagine the worst possible outcome of a situation. If I do not plan out almost every course in my life, then it feels as though something bad will surely happen.
In my own interpretation of the front of the card, I focused on that moment before The Fool is about to step off the cliff, an action that will possibly end their idealistic journey for good. Below the cliff are a pack of
aggressive, wild dogs acting as a further warning to the adventurer.
On the back of the card, I focus on the white rose that The Fool holds in their left hand and is seen on the original depiction of the Tarot card. This symbolism acts as a reminder that one must not let their thoughts overcome and consume them - they are only thoughts. Approaching life in a reckless way may be harmful, but only focusing on negative outcomes is damaging as well.
The Magus - Hailey Quick - www.haileyhquick.com - @haileyhquick
In my interpretation of "The Magus" card I chose to showcase all of the traditional elements in this tarot card. The magician I depicted is a woman, as women were the earliest sorceresses, muses, and practitioners of magic. Though they are not usually pictured or thought of when thinking of a magician. I placed her large and in the center with a border around to help highlight her. I also chose to highlight the hands pointing in opposite directions which symbolize the statement "as above, so below" on the back of the card. The phrase "as above, so below" is a statement that implies the microcosm and macrocosm are connected and this just really stuck with me as someone who thoroughly enjoys ecology and understanding and seeing how everything is connected.
The Priestess - Julianne Villegas - www.juliannemvillegas.com - single0pickles@gmail.com @singlepickles
My work addresses how cultural identity manifests as the romanticization and trauma from displacement. Where others have a sense of pride for where they originally came from, I have always known the Philippines as a colonized country. I cannot tell where the Western facet of my identity ends and where my Filipino-ness begins. As a second generation immigrant, I cannot discern my violence from my ancestry. In an act of reclamation, I make art that situates my brown body within spaces and ideas of self love, childhood nostalgia, and traditional handicraft.
The Empress - Alanna Austin - www.alannaaustin.com - @aestheticsimpulse - alannaaustinart@gmail.com
In my addressing of “The Empress” card, I utilized a species that is dominant in nature around the place I live. The empress is tied heavily to nature, life itself, and the universe. For my piece, the rabbit is dominant as the empress with an off kilt crown. The rabbit represents in my eyes a species that produces a lot of life, immerses itself in a variety of settings, and is strong despite it’s constant fear of being run over by cars. In a lot of my work as of late, I have been focusing on my own connection with the world and I have felt very akin to the rabbit as it’s a very unique species that is hated and adored depending on the homeowner. Around the empress is a pomegranate that represents fertility, with the 12 stars representing the months, and on the back is the empress symbol.
The Emperor - Eve Hamilton-Kruger - @eve.kruger.art - www.evekrugerart.com - evekruger7@gmail.com
For the creation of my print, I focused on the imagery and symbolism found in the original Emperor Tarot and translated it into a new image. The Emperor card is the father archetype of the Tarot deck, representing authority, establishment, and structure if upright, and domination, excessive control, and lack of discipline if reversed. The emperor is seen seated upon a large stone throne with rams carved into its back, clothed in red robes and a set of armor underneath, and ruling over a mountainous landscape with a small river.
On the face of my emperor card, I depicted a ram’s head, a symbol of the emperor’s connections with Aries and the planet Mars, with a ruby in its forehead. The ram reflects the emperor’s determination, action, initiative, and leadership while ruling over his kingdom, and the red from the ruby symbolizes his power, passion, and energy for life. The helmet found on the back of the card shows the emperor’s protection from any threat or vulnerability and is engraved with the Egyptian symbol of life, the ankh. The flowing river found behind the helmet, reveals that although the emperor rules with strength and force, he is still an emotional being.
The Hierophant - Zoë Couvillion - @zoecouvillion - zoecouvillion@gmail.com
The Hierophant Tarot Card is also recognized as “The High Priest” or “The Pope,” and traditionally depicts a male religious figure positioned between the pillars of Obedience and Disobedience. My interpretation unearths the dark undertones of clerical child abuse associated with Catholicism and its priestly figures, and pushes the card into an all-too-uncomfortable modern-day. I abstract scale within this two-sided piece, and use abandoned spaces and objects to depict a rift between introspectiveness and the repression of memories. The Hierophant’s traditional image includes the keys to heaven beside its main figure; the key ring I depict is much more slice-of-life and cluttered, and is a nod to the many doors that the viewer can access, heavenly or otherwise.
The Lovers - Julia Palmer - juliapalmer.wa@gmail.com - @juliaepalmer -
The Chariot - Graham Fee - @ __insta_graham__ - www.graham-fee.com - gfee123@gmail.com
A figure carried forward by vehicle to which they hold no reins; instead the vehicle is driven by strength of will and mind alone. The vehicle itself, both black and white showing both good and evil, in opposition or at odds with the powers that be, is steered by sheer resolve. Celestial objects represent what is coming into being, and what the future holds for the charioteer. The crown signals victory, enlightenment and success on their path as the charioteer drives onward.
With distinct reverence to the times we face, each of us our own charioteer, advances into the future. While the reins may not sit directly in our hands, the power to steer the chariot is still ever-present. From the historical and categorical references we begin to understand the nature of what it means to be a charioteer in this time, and the challenges of doing so. Thinly veiled by the notion of clarity and control, the imagery of the card itself speaks to the time of its creation and either serendipitously, or by way of the card itself perhaps, to the time and societal challenges immediately following its creation.
Justice - Tucker Howard - @unclethugboat - www.tuckhoward.com - tuck2306@gmail.com
My work takes a critical look into the American rural South. The prints explore this political battlefield within America through comedic narratives and characters that poke fun at the ideologies of the region and play with ideas of rural stereotypes. Through sourcing imagery and stories from personal experience, the prints mix ridicule and dread with a conflicting sense of delight in finding humor at the expense of the South. These representations of a cynical regional identity seek to provide the viewer with overblown, repulsive, and absurd reactions to the region. The work presented expresses my own frustrations I associate with the South through the use of humor and satire.
The Hermit - Michael Toups - miketoups.myportfolio.com - @micl64 - miketoups@hotmail.com
The representation of The Hermit depicts introspection and a refocusing of attention inward from previously outward focus. The sudden flooding from Hurricane Harvey in 2017 forced me into this situation; High waters kept me isolated physically, and the loss of power and phone service isolated me further. I wanted to depict this hermit-like week I experienced into the composition of the front and back of this piece. One side shows the hermit in efforts to find his way through the darkness in deep waters with a line of swaying power line poles to portray the danger of wading the dangerous landscape. The other side shows the hermit stranded atop a light pole surrounded by a tangled mass of bramble, also emphasising the forced isolation and encroaching danger.
Wheel of Fortune - Roberta Restaino - @roberta.restaino - www.robertarestaino.com - Roberta.restaino@gmail.com
Roberta Restaino’s work can only be approached by accepting art as an open system: protean, powerful, and mutable as it confronts its own disciplinary limitations, new art forms, and modes of thought. When you approach her work, the art is not quiet; instead, it is something we encounter, something that forces us to think. It help[s encourage a theoretical framework of art history that can be anchored in an interpretation of the world that exists indissolubly linked to the complexities and aesthetics of the biological world. By extracting subtleties from the biological world that would otherwise go unnoticed, her innovative exploration of the natural world that engulfs us yields pieces that can be characterized as at once aesthetic and ontological. Her artistic practice as a scientist whose microscopic observations of the natural world lead her to new discoveries and new platforms.
Strength - Darla Pienciak - @pienciakdarla - sites.google.com/site/darlapienciakartist/ - dp127801@umconnect.umt.edu
I am a printmaking and installation artist. Through my work, I draw connections between individuals and/or communities, through the use of analogy, psychology, sociology, and systems. Through my work, I help others to more easily understand outside perspectives. I do this to facilitate empathy between individuals to reduce the amount of misunderstanding in the world. This is done through drawing attention to commonalities between communities, and by stressing the importance of bonds between one another. I draw upon the shared aspects of life that people have, and the inter-relatedness and shared human experience of different communities or groups. Through these I reiterate the importance of belonging to one or many of these groups, and how essential it is to feel like a productive, and needed, part of a community, and how this is essential for one’s mental consonance and well-being. Currently I am focusing on examining families, both biological families and chosen families.
The Hanged Man - Jacob Taylor Gibson - @http.pleasekillme - jacobtaylorgibson@gmail.com
The card of the hanged man symbolizes stasis, sacrifice, and periods of indecision. I utilize the Hanged Man motif by depicting items associated with familial tradition. In doing so, I create a metaphor for the taught behaviors and actions passed down within my own abusive family.
Though the Hanged Man does not always carry a negative connotation, I question what it takes to stop a cycle of abuse, and whether the only way to end said cycle is through self-sacrifice and self-destruction.
Death - Thinh Dinh - @thnhdnh - www.thnhdnh.com - thinhdinh0496@gmail.com
Having immigrated to the United States at a young age, I didn’t feel attached to Vietnam yet felt like an outsider in my new “home.” In my work, I create liminal spaces, a state of in-between-ness and ambiguity that encourages transition, through fictitious landscapes to explore the reconstruction of cultural identity filtered by my childhood memories and feelings of displacement & isolation.
These spaces serve as personal mind maps, with different perspectives & memories nested within one another, an odd mix of old & new. They're time stamps composed through repetitive markmaking, drawn from the tools & techniques of traditional East Asian ink-and-wash artworks seen through a contemporary filter on printmaking.
Temperance - Jessica Lambert - @jessicadlambertart - www.jessicadlambert.com - jessicadlambert7@gmail.com
Jessica Lambert is a Master of Fine Arts Candidate with an emphasis in Sculpture at Texas Tech University. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts student with an emphasis in Sculpture at Southeast Missouri State University.
The Devil - Haley Takahashi - HaleyTak@gmail.com - @HaleyTokiko - www.haleytakahashi.com
Hayley’s focus is in contemporary printmaking methods combined with traditional Japanese imagery, symbolism, and craft. She strives to comprehend her own identity as a mixed race person as well as her family history and the importance of juxtaposing the past to the present to incite social change.
The Tower - Heather Kahn-Pyatt - @heather.k.pyatt - www.heatherkpyatt.com - heatherkpyatt@gmail.com
“...destruction, loss, radical, foundational change. Abandon what you’ve previously relied on as truth and make room for new beliefs, ideas and growth.”
Heather’s work is anchored by her interest in patterning and motif. The compositional interplay of abstract elements: color, line and shape provide an endless language for expressing impressions about time, place and states of sensory awareness.
The Star - Brian Wagner - flowerboypress@yahoo.com - @hedgebitch - www.glitterkween.com
"As the Star follows the Tower card in the Tarot, it comes as a welcome reprieve after a period of destruction and turmoil. You have endured many challenges and stripped yourself bare of any limiting beliefs that have previously held you back. You are realising your core essence, who you are beneath all the layers.
My work recently has been exploring these themes, and what it means to reside in an in-between space. To repair oneself. With the Star card, anything is possible and the magic is flowing around you; trust in the universe and her energies is crucial. Look skyward and know that you are not alone."
The Moon - Melanie Yazzie - melanie.yazzie@colorado.edu -
Melanie Yazzie works a wide range of media that include printmaking, painting, sculpting, and ceramics, as well as installation art.[3] Her art is accessible to the public on many levels and the main focus is on connecting with people and educating people about the contemporary status of one indigenous woman and hoping that people can learn from her experience.
Melanie's work focuses primarily on themes of indigenous people [6]. Her work often brings images of women from many indigenous cultures to the forefront. Thus her work references matrilineal systems and points to the possibility of female leadership. There are many layers to the works and within the story layers, many discover that our history is varied and deep. It is made clear that there are many indigenous peoples in the world and we all have different stories and it sometimes has a sad connection to mainstream society.
The Sun - Dakota Nanton - www.dakotananton.com - dakotananton@gmail.com - @dcnanton
Dakota Nanton is an experimental filmmaker based out of Boulder, Colorado. His artwork and films draw inspiration from such diverse influences as comic books, folklore, and science fiction to create meditative ruminations on desire and death. Borrowing from the images and iconographies of the past, and mixing old techniques with new, he explores the complexities and contradictions of living in the modern world.
Judgement - Heather Hanson - heatherhanson.art - @heatherhanson.art - heather@heatherhanson.art
The Judgement Card is a reflective call to face your destiny head on, without doubt, in order to enable life altering change. The card counsels us to get out of our own way and embrace our future.
The World - Aaron Pozos - @afterrapture - pozos.aaron@gmail.com