September 2, 2010
Science Tarot Deck - coming soon!
For the last year or so I've been participating in a really exciting project dreamed up by some friends of mine - a tarot deck, re-interpreted through the lens of SCIENCE. The creators re-envisioned the traditional tarot according to various scientific themes, which they mapped to the different suits - wands, pentacles, swords, and cups. Each tarot card within a suit is matched with a scientific concept that best reflects the card's traditional meaning, as well as expressing additional elements from the world of science. One of my favorite examples is the six of cups, a card that in the science tarot represents the evolution of marine mammals (like whales and seals) from prehistoric terrestrial mammals. The fact that these mammals apparently "returned" to the sea, the original source of all animal life, nicely references the traditional tarot meaning for this card - the six of cups can refer to revisiting and reminiscing about the past, reuniting with old loved ones, and thus being better able to embrace new experiences.
If that isn't cool enough, each suits' "face cards" (page, knight, queen, and king) represent different scientists whose ideas or research apply to the concept of the suit in some way. The face cards include some names you may recognize (Darwin, Carl Sagan, John Muir) as well as introducing some lesser-known contributors in the field of science like Otto Loewi, Robert Hooke, and Maria Sybella Marian. I was offered the opportunity to illustrate the "cups" suit, which ends up representing a lot of biology-related concepts (and includes a lot of wildlife illustration) so of course I was delighted to take this project on! Here are some examples of my completed card illustrations:
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After more than a year of hard work by all of the artists involved, (and much longer for the project's original creators/masterminds) this completed tarot deck will be hot off the presses and ready to sell in just a few weeks! The deck will be for sale on the Science Tarot website as well as at our upcoming launch party and art show, a one night event on Thursday, September 23rd at the California Academy of Sciences. I will post more information about this event soon - I'll be back in California just in time to appear there, and show some of my original Science Tarot card illustrations.
I have loved watching this huge project come together, a seemingly overwhelming amount of work that came together so nicely as all of these talented people collaborated. The whole really is greater than the sum of its parts!
For more information, images, and news, please visit the Science Tarot website.
Posted by tammy at September 2, 2010 10:22 AM