Creating the Seaglass Tarot

This project started as a standalone piece, "The Moon", and a growing 4 year interest in tarot. I had just quit a job that left me injured and unable to walk well. I took it as a chance to dedicate my energy to art while I was healing, and what started as a few pieces in what could be a series (The Moon, the Sun, the Hermit, the Star, and the High Priestess) became the spearheads of an idea I had for a "nautical tarot". They were fun pieces that I could really throw myself into, and an idea, a theme was beginning to emerge. I committed to this idea, mapping out the concepts for each card and the deck, and buying more supplies (including a bulk roll of canvas as big as a rug, after going through the stretched canvas I had on hand). It felt like I could finally express some of my own meditations about each card through this art as well.

I had a few aims in creating this deck:

• To create a work inspired by a stained glass aesthetic, which was currently fascinating me after I had watched many videos of stained glass artisans online. I liked the planning, the pattern, and the way that the medium forces the artist to render shapes with certain considerations, and often with artful simplicity. I also appreciate the way stained glass is designed to be viewed with light coming through it rather than arriving at it. That is meaningful in itself, to me.

• To create a deck using imagery which was both more accessible on the grounds of its imagery being observable through nature, and one which dethrones the gender, monarchy, and religious institutional mainstays of tarot.