Tag Archives: abstract art

Tarotcast

Tarotcast for Week of October 21, 2018

Kito Fujio

With my ode to macabre this month, I highlight another photographer, Kito Fujio, who brings the spooky into childhood places of play.  This series is about the cement-molded play equipment in many playgrounds of Japan.  He shoots these at night with his unique lighting which gives these places of fun a more ominous or alien tone.

The design idea that drives many of these cement pieces are based on Isamu Noguchi playground designs. Noguchi was an artist of varied talents, though many of his playground designs never made it through the red-tape of government.  His idea about playground design was to make a place where children were introduced to the basic shapes and the concept of in, out, up, down and around.  As he said “I think of playgrounds as a primer of shapes and functions; simple, mysterious, and evocative; thus educational.”  Isamu Noguchi last design before his death was  Morenuma Park, which is a conversion of an old landfill into a beautiful and awe-inspiring nod to nature and shape.

P.S. Remember signs with an * it’s a big week for you.  Halloween is a great time for a reading.  Please share.

Aries – Page of Swords

Kito FujioThe Page of Swords comes to advise that you need to uncover information that is hard to find without inquiry and a bit of sleight of hand.  The Page of Swords is the card of the spy.  So some sleuth work is needed before you make any decision or move forward this week.

 

Taurus – Two of Pentacles

Kito FujioThe past two weeks the World wanted you to finish up the old to create room for new, and then the Lovers card wanted you to start creating with others.  Now the energy shifts to the Two of Pentacles, the card of balance and juggling.  This card advises you to juggle just two things this week and get very secure with your balance between these two items before you add another item or project into your hands.

 

Gemini – Page of Cups

Kito FujioThe Page of Cups comes when you need to be reminded about the joy in life. This card wants you to see, hear, and touch with the senses of a child.  This is week get out your coloring books, Playdough, Legos, or your favorite toy and play.

 

*Cancer – Lovers

Kito FujioLast week, the Fool challenged you to acknowledge and let go of the excess so you can pack lighter for the road ahead.  The Lovers continues this theme. Its challenge is for you to pick companions on this journey.  Take this week to make sure the ones around you support you.  This can be as simple as making sure you have the right people to work on a project or as complex as evaluate the broader community around you. Your motto:  Love is my guide.

 

Leo – Queen of Swords

Kito FujioLast week, the Empress wanted you to find something that you truly love doing and do it bigger and better.  The Queen of Swords continues this theme but has you hone in on the strategic part of your plan. This week stay in your mind and plan than worry about actions of the future.

 

*Virgo – Sun

Kito FujioThe theme continues with more building and growing with the Sun, last week the Magician called in new ideas and processes to continue building on what you started. This week the Sun not only continues this theme but ignites it with energy.  Your challenge is how to harness this energy and use it like a laser. Your motto: Keep growing and expanding.

 

Libra – Ace of Pentacles

Kito FujioThe Ace of Pentacles is the last card of your birth month and declares this year as a year of planting seeds for projects to grow until 2020.  So take this week to figure out what seeds you want to plant and tend in your garden for the coming year.

 

Scorpio – King of Wands

Kito FujiioThe King of Wands challenges you this week to be more creative and passionate about what you are doing.  The conundrum comes when what you do brings no passion into your life. If this is so then this week might be the time to make some changes in what rules your daily life.

 

Sagittarius – Four of Cups

Kito FujioThe Four of Cups is the card of disenchantment or not seeing what is offered is pretty darn spectacular and ultimately what you feel is missing.  The challenge with this card is getting into and enjoying the rhythm of the everyday emotional tides or currents.  By seeing the paradox of stability in motion or ” emotional flow” and then devoting yourself to it  gives you the last piece of your puzzle. Motto: In the ordinary I see the extraordinary.

 

Capricorn – Knight of Pentacles

Kito FujioThe Knight of Pentacle is the card of methodical and thoughtful movement. The challenges with this card are pace and the movement forward.  This week all your activities should move you forward at a slow and steady pace.  If they are not this is the week to get rid of or adjust them so they do.

 

*Aquarius – Wheel

Kito FujioThe Wheel is the card of change of karma and fate.  When this card shows up it means this is a turning point in your life that no matter what it feels like your fortune is changing. The challenge with this card is to see the only control you have is to spin the wheel.  You cannot control the spin or pick the price.  What comes this week is your gift how you use it is up to you.  Your motto:  Doesn’t hurt to try.

 

*Pisces – World

Last week, the High Priestess challenged you to pull into your inner-scape and plug into your intuition; you will be able to sync yourself with your life path. Now we know why, the World has shown up to challenge you to close old doors and open new ones. You got the World almost to the date last month, so you get another crack at it. This week take this energy and finalize some old projects or people and at the same time go out and look for new projects or people.  The World wants to help your challenge is you will need to go to new haunts to greet it. Your motto:  I am open to the new.

 

May light be on you, around you, and within you,

Nina

 

Tarotcast

Tarotcast Week of September 9, 2018

Franco FontanaWorkers are fixing a pothole outside my house and they had to stop multiple times because it began to rain.  A paradox of mine is I hate the smell of an asphalt roads being laid, but I am also fond of the smell of rain hitting asphalt. During my urban sojourns, it was a sign of a respite from the summer heat.  Both these experiences are unique to the modern world and drew me to the photography of Franco Fontana’s asfalti.   He is famously known for his abstract landscapes, and is considered the inventor the photographic line referred to as the concept of line.

His motto is the purpose of art is to make visible the invisible. I find that his body of work really exemplifies this. He is not condoning the natural world being slowly paved over, but that the lesson is to look for the hidden geometry that pulls our eyes and possible defines what we consider beautiful or not.

P.S. Please share.

Aries – Three of Swords

Franco FontanaThe Three of Swords continues the theme from the Moon card last week.  This week this card advises to continue working with only three of the hidden thoughts you have discovered.  This card also advises that these beliefs be not only removed but destroyed.  They are based in negative triggers placed in your thought patterns by others.

 

Taurus – Eight of Wands

Franco FontanaMessages are the theme for this week.   Keep your eyes and mind open.  There is a lot of important information coming at you that you will need in the near future.  Be the sponge.
Continue reading Tarotcast Week of September 9, 2018 →

Tarotcast

Tarotcast for Week of July 29, 2018

Abstract Expressionist Elaine de Kooning

A feminine viewpoint throughout art history has had a small lens.  It was not that woman didn’t do fine art but their main function was as objects for paintings or their work considered too feminine to have substance or meaning. During the 50’s and 60’s the art movement of Abstract Expressionist became even more of a boys club.  This weeks’ artist is Elaine de Kooning who had to deal with this bias with a double lens of being female and married to an artist.

Elaine was an Abstract and Figurative Expressionist. Even though, she was the only female member of the Eight Street Club in New York City, an artistic think tank with some of the heavy hitter of the Expressions movement, her work was looked over.  A perfect example of this overly male point of view was her first show. It  was curated for married artists to show their artwork together; however, it was called Artists: Man and Wife.  Which she later commented:   “It seemed like a good idea at the time, but later I came to think that it was a bit of a put-down of the women. There was something about the show that attached women-wives- to the real artists”.

For that reason, Elaine chose to sign her artworks with her initials rather than her full name, to avoid her paintings’ being labeled as feminine in a traditionally masculine movement and not to be confused with her husband’s paintings. When you look at her body of work most of her portraits and abstracts are of men or bulls and are done with broad strokes.  As if she is saying you want to see through the lens of a powerful woman – here you go.

P.S. Please share.  Also, I have put up another quote to download for your vision board.  Enjoy.

 

Aries – Page of Swords

Elaine de Kooning Abstract Expressionist

The Page of Swords means you need to do some investigative work this week.  Everything is not as it seems. There is an underlining dialogue or situation that needs to be uncovered.

 

Taurus – King of Swords

Elaine de Kooning Abstract Expressionist

The last two weeks have been deep with the Star and Hermit challenging you to heal and take solace in solitude.  You need that for this week because the King of Sword is the strategist of the deck.  This card advises you to take this week to do some long-term, like until 2020, planning.
Continue reading Tarotcast for Week of July 29, 2018 →

Tarotcast

Tarot-Cast for Week of June 10, 2018

This tarot-cast’s art work is done by Maryanne Pollock.  To me, her pieces  bring to light duality in myself and my environment.  For example, the piece above makes me smile and feel calm in the same moment.  It also reminds me of diatoms and algae looking through a microscope and stars and planets looking through a telescope.  Another example is her White Desert project from 2015 which was thoughtful and now even more eerily relevant piece about refugees.  I found this project touching on duality through the lens of age and small/global community (time and space).  Her art reminds us that in our seemingly polar differences there is similarity and a sense of connectivity.

Gemini is a sign of duality and connectivity.  Where we can feel seemingly opposing things within a moment and yet when we stand back can see the ribbon of commonality. Gemini is  the month in the northern hemisphere where we feel the last cool breezes of spring and the beginnings of summer’s hot days.  Where in the southern hemisphere we feel the last bit of warmth of fall’s sun and start to feel the cold wind of winter with in moments.  And  in both where weather can change in a blink,  sunny one moment and a downpour the next. The Gemini sign reminds us that life is not simple and that in many ways “one” does not truly exist.

P.S. Please share.

Aries – Three of Swords

The Three of Swords in the coming week there will be three events that trigger your insecurities.  The challenge is to make each event one of healing rather than anguish.

Taurus – Seven of Cups

The Seven of Cups is the card of dreams.  Pay attention to your dreams this week.  Not only the ones you have when you sleep, but also the ones you have when you are awake.  Let your mind wander in the realm of possibilities.  The only challenge is blocking your brainstorming with limitations.
Continue reading Tarot-Cast for Week of June 10, 2018 →

Tarotcast

Tarot-cast for Week of May 6, 2018

Ellsworth Kelly

Above is the artwork, Colors for a Large Wall, by Ellsworth Kelly. Kelly covered 64 square canvas in a single color and then randomly fused them together to become a bigger piece.  This was the beginning of his life-long inquiry that paintings were objects within themselves. This painting became the seed for many of his future pieces juxtaposing panels of different size, shapes and colors in to countless variations of work.

Kelly once said that ..if you can turn off the mind and look only with the eyes ultimately everything becomes abstract. I would also add that paradoxically it becomes simpler.  That by turn off the mind both abstract and simplicity can hold a unique form of beauty and peace.

P.S. Please share.

Aries- Four of Swords

Ellsworth KellyScience says that rest is a valuable component of your health regime and the Four of Swords recommends you will need it.  The Four of Swords also challenges you actually to not push anything through this week.

Taurus- Two of Cups

Ellsworth KellyThe Two of Cups recommends applying your energy to deepen your close relationships.  Our emotions are set into memory with our senses. So look in your love ones’ eyes, breathe in their scent, touch them with love, and listen to their feelings behind their words. Continue reading Tarot-cast for Week of May 6, 2018 →

Tarotcast

Tarotcast for Week of Feb. 11, 2017

Jack Whitten was an abstract artist that died two days ago.  He swam in the abstract, not only in his art form but in his mind. He recently said I practice thought experiments in abstract painting. Thought experiments allow me to…travel anywhere I want without the encumbrance of matter.

Throughout his career, he seemed to try creating a sense of  structure out of the chaos of the abstract. He was discovered by the art community by his unique technique of  painting layers of paint then combing them in a way that seemed to tame the chaos.  Later, Whitten created and refined a technique of building up a painted surface with gobs of acrylic paint and minute artifacts  (dust, pieces of wood, glass etc..).  He then cut the painted surface into tiles and reconstructed the painting.   He was fascinated with quantum physics and made it his focal point of his last show, Quantum Walls before his death.

Quantum Mechanics is the fundamental theory in science which describes nature at the smallest scale – energy levels of atoms and subatomic particles. One of the main experiments of Quantum theory is the Slot Experiment.  Scientists shot a beam of particles at a wall with two slots and found there is a pattern predicting where those particles will land on the screen behind.  Then they shot one particle thinking it will pick a slot to go into predictably, but the funny thing is it shows the same pattern as the beam of particles.   So as Whitten explained about his last art project and oddly sums up this experiment:  Quantum mechanics has rendered obsolete any notion of a wall.

Aries – Page of Swords

Jack WhittenThe last two weeks, the Emperor and the Empress challenged you to use your creative energy.  This week the Page of Swords tells you to step off doing and to listen.  This card foretells that there is some information that you need to find.  Your challenge is to ask questions but in the most subtle of ways.  It is not words that will be telling you what’s going on but subtle body cues.

*Taurus – Chariot

The Chariot brings change that you are in control of.  This week is all about moving forward with balance.  This in its simplest form tells you to check your tires or eat a more balanced diet, but in its complex this is seriously doing something about imbalances in your life. Continue reading Tarotcast for Week of Feb. 11, 2017 →

Tarotcast

Tarotcast for Week of Jan. 28, 2018

Joan Mitchell

Above and below are the paintings by Joan Mitchell an abstract expressionist painter and print maker. She is one of the few female painters of her era to gain critical claim.  This post World War II art movement was the first time America, specifically New York, was put as the center of the western art world instead of Paris. Abstract expressionist art tries to articulate the complexity of our heart and mind clashing, melding, bleeding into each other.  The internal human experience without the defined image.

PS. Don’t forget the signs with an * it is a big week for you.

*Aries – Emperor

The Emperor tells us to stop procrastinating.  This is a week to build new bridges, create new civilizations, to conquer your fear and just do it.  The challenge is believing you can and asking for help when you can’t.

 

Taurus – King of Swords

The King of Swords says now is the time. Your challenge this week is to walk your talk, so be careful what you promise. Your words are now as loud and important  as your actions.
Continue reading Tarotcast for Week of Jan. 28, 2018 →