Gouache, acrylic, and linocut on Arches watercolor paper.

Summer 2018

Individual cards dimensions: 3” x 4.5” x 0.03”

This deck of card is the accumulation of the experiences I gained from the 2018 Summer Travel Intensive program, exploring the Appalachian Trail while focusing on Natural American History and Identity, with MICA professors and peers.

‘Here be dragons': Major Arcana is a deck of card that closely resemble a deck of Tarot cards. This deck can be use as for divination and spiritual purpose such as a card reading, or it can be handled as playing cards (refer to image 3 for how-to-play suggestion and more information on the deck).

ABOUT DEVELOPING THIS WORK

"Here be dragons" means dangerous or unexplored territories, in imitation of a medieval practice of putting illustrations of dragons, sea-monsters and other mythological creatures on uncharted areas of maps

Wikipedia, Accessed 2018.

Throughout the trip, I received a lot of maps to navigate and prepare myself for the hikes. When we the museums visited Washington D.C. on one of our few off-days for the intense outdoor activities, my professors and the group had walked by a colonial map printed as the wallpaper in the National Portrait Gallery that had included reference to this term, ‘Here Be Monsters,’ while not in the exact wording. My professor lectured about the map and its history in relation to American and world history and had briefly given an explanation of the monster drawings in the uncharted territories also.

This piece of information stuck out and stayed with me for the rest of the trip. The idea of the unknown and unexplored territories of this phrase was immensely paralleled to my experience of joining this program, for I never thought of myself as an outdoor or athletic person and have never kayak, cave climbing, or hike ever in my life. Everything I did and every step I took in during this trip were a step into the uncertain, unknown aspect of my own ability.

So, after the trip, while doing research for the final project, I decided to focus on the idea of finding your way in the unknown and building your own narrative of an adventure. I looked at the work of Ellie Ga (which I have encountered in Storm King Sculpture Park special exhibition also during the trip) where she created the Deck of Tara which also reflect and record her travels and research. I dived reading into cards, especially tarot, as a device to navigate information, thoughts, and self in which I ran across a story covered on The Great Big Story channel about an tarot card artist in Italy, “The Handmade Art of Tarot Card” that has intrigued me into learning about different meanings of tarot.

I then incorporated my experience with the format of tarot card in reflecting the storytelling concept of venturing into the unknown. While the foundation meaning and order of each card has stayed the same as the tarot deck, the actual names of each card in ‘Here be dragons’ has been refined to reflect the unique experiences of the trip to add a personal depth to the deck.

The first half of the set (image 1) is the journey of the self, while the other half represent the journey through the world, the environment. Through the process the protagonist would not only learn about themselves, but also find harmony within the world.