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Tarot Cards

I designed a deck of tarot cards between 2000 and 2001, taking advantage of a rare stretch of time when I was un- or at least under-employed to sink obsessively into the details of the project. I researched the traditional meanings of all 78 cards, paring them down to a table of keywords that I kept on my desk so I could triumphantly cross out each card that I completed. The process of searching the internet, classical art, comics, science fiction and fantasy collections, as well as my own photos of friends and relatives, brought together several of my favorite quasi-meditative pursuits in life.

The strangest coincidence — and there were many over the course of the project — was the design of the High Priestess card, completed in August 2001 and emailed to friends and family along with half a dozen other cards, just days before a virus took me offline and endangered all the files on my computer for six tense — and, as world events unfolded thereafter, traumatic — weeks. The Towers card was designed as soon as my computer was back up and running. It was several days after that, as I was looking over the cards I had finished before the crash, that I finally noticed the High Priestess card and shook my head in disbelief.

New Orleans Post-Katrina

My friend Nicholas (formerly known as Brady) visited New Orleans immediately after Katrina and spent a frustrating month battling beauracracy and narrowly avoiding being arrested for walking the streets after the curfew was in effect. He was able to help some people too, delivering food and water, directing them to shelters, listening to their stories, though he is barely able to see that even now, let alone at the time. He also took these pictures.

Vancouver Skies

For much of the year our beautifully clean, safe, temperate city is a study in greys; 40% grey sky, mottled, glassy grey waters swirling around the bays, inlets and harbors before retreating out to what we can only assume is an expanse of impassable grey ocean stretching off into the grey horizon. But then there are the days when Vancouver convinces us that none of that matters. These are pictures of those days.