"Kitchen Tarot Café: 4 of Wooden Spoons." all views.
by Susan Shie Contact me
"Kitchen Tarot Café: 4 of Wooden Spoons.” 2010
91"h x 81 "w. #393. Peace Cozy #35.
Began sketches 9-14-10, began painting 9-22-10. Finished art quilt 12-15-10.
Whole cloth painting on fabric. Airbrush drawing and colors with fabric paiint, then airpen writing with fabric paint. Machine crazy grid quilting with Aurifil thread. One row of hand sewing inside edge of border with Artfabrik perle cotton. One Green Temple Buddha Boy bead, one Pink Buddha Girl flameworked bead. One Peace Cozy appliqué. Nature-fil bamboo and cotton batting.
This piece celebrates the 2010 publishing of my Kitchen Tarot deck of 22 Major Arcana card quilts, begun in 1998. Tarot reader Dennis Fairchild wrote the guidebook included with the cards. Here I painted us as the artist and writer (cook and waiter) in the conceptual Kitchen Tarot Café, which is the name of the deck’s Facebook page. This 4 of Wooden Spoons (Wands) is one of the 56 Minor Arcana cards I’m making for the complete 78 card Kitchen Tarot deck, to be truly finished by 2022.
Diary writing on The Kitchen Tarot Café includes the cholera epidemic in Haiti, two coal mining disasters within three months of each other (in Chile and New Zealand), Wikileaks controversy, the struggle in Congress over the Bush tax cuts and unemployment benefits’ extension, and much more.
I wrote a lot about making the 22 major cards for the Kitchen Tarot, and how on January 14, 2008 I got an email from Denny Fairchild, because someone had sent him my Colander / Fool card (that they’d bought at a dollar store…), and Denny wanted to buy the deck that this card would be the first card in. I told him I didn’t have a deck yet, and that the card he had was discontinued, but thanks. We ended up deciding that he would write a book about my 22 major cards, which would be all finished by the end of 2008, and that he would try to get us published. And he got Hay House for the Kitchen Tarot!!!
Since Denny had created a Facebook page called The Kithen Tarot Café, I decided that my 4 of Wooden Spoons piece, my seventh Minor Arcana KT card, would be a picture of that café, with us working away in it. I made Denny as the waiter/writer and me as the cook/artist, holding up a tray together, that has all the 4 suits of the Kitchen Tarot on it: Pyrex Cups for Cups, Potholders for Disks, Paring Knives for Swords, and Wooden Spoons for Wands. I put a Moon in one of the windows of the café, to ahow how intuitive this project is, and how much we’ve both relied on our intuition to do what we do in the project.
I drew four cards laid out on the table, and actually pulled four of my Kitchen Tarot cards, each according to a specific question, and then wrote Denny’s writing from the guidebook, for each card, on it on the quilt. I put a creation spiral on Denny’s writing hand. And wrote “Creation” on my paintbrush.
The four yellow wooden spoons on the table are in a bucket, because, when I was teaching and having my solo show at the Festival of Quilts in Birmingham, England this last August, Rita Scannell and I went to a little place called The Little Owl, in Solihull, near the big National Exposition Center, where all the FoQ events were held. At the Little Owl, they have a big bucket of painted and numbered wooden spoons on the bar. So, when you place your order, the bartender gives you a numbered spoon, and you take it back to lay on your table. They can find you that way and get the right food to you. This image of the big wooden spoons in the bucket really made an impression on me, as dd the Little Owl in general. So I put it front and center in our Café. Shoulda painted in at least one of my little patio owls, in honor of the pub, and of course, where are my ubiquitous PIES???? I shoulda had at least one PIE, considering all those Sherpherd’s Pies and Kidney Pies, and God knows what other pies they cook up, there in the UK!!!!! Maybe I have to add a couple of owls and pies on the back – just draw them with my airpen, by the label!
You’d think after all the sketches I made, building up to making this piece, that the owls and pies thing would have occurred to me before NOW! Yikes!
I put a Peace Palm tree coming out of each of our bodies, and put the 35th Peace Cozy I’ve done, on the leafy fronds of my Peace Palm. I want this piece to feel both festive and peaceful. I affirm the success of our Kitchen Tarot project with this piece, which is actually the 7th of the 56 Minor Arcana card quilts I’ve made in the two years, since I finished the 22 Major Arcana quilts.
Libby Spooler (Elisabeth Rose Evangeline Spooler, to be exact) sits at the bottom of the piece, drawn as a bigger dog than she’s been so far. Libby’s named after Libby Bruch, a wonderful and philanthropic woman of Wooster, founder of Quaildrest Farm, who passed away last winter. We want our Libby to have the personality traits of Libby Bruch – who could ever ask for a more noble and classy persona.
We got LIbby on Oct 8, when she was almost 8 weeks old, and today, December 15, is her 4th month birthday. She now weighs about 25-6 pounds, about half of her full grown weight. Hard to believe she’ll grow that much more, but, yes, she will, she of huge puppy feets!
There’s a very calm Buddha Girl in red, sitting over by my copyright stuff, at the bottom right side, as you’re looking at this piece. That’s my mother, Marie Snyder Shie, who always filled a room with peace and comfort: She was and still is my St Quilta the Comforter. She would like this Kitchen Tarot Café, and would probably drive over every day, in her 1973 sparkly dark blue Pontiac Grand Am, and have some tea, while she petted Libby and Denny read her cards. I don’t think Mom ever had her Tarot cards read, but I know she’d love Denny and would enjoy what he had to say.
This piece is the first one I’ve started for the Minor Arcana cards, since the publication this August 1st, of the Major Arcana cards’ deck. And with this one, I have seven of the 56 Minors done! Only 47 to go! If I can dontinue to make 4 large card quilts a year, that’s about 12 more years, so I expect to finish the Full Deck of all 78 pieces by 2022, and maybe I can get it published by 2023 or 2024. I think the point is: Don’t hold your breath! Go buy the 22 Major Cards’ deck of the Kitchen Tarot for now. It’ll be valid as my only deck of cards made from art quilts for a long time to come!
I really, really enjoy telling all kinds of stories from the news and my own private thoughts, on these pieces. Here are a few of the topics I covered, while writing on this piece from Oct 15 to Dec 15:
10-15: Enjoying carrying Libby (on walks and around the house), while she’s still small; the meaning of the 4 of Wands tarot card. 10-19: rescue of the Chilean miners. 10-21: Libby and my visit to Carol Ohl’s Treatyline Pottery; 10-22: Eva turns 6! Time out to teach at Valley Ridge Art Studio. 10-29: Yemen airplane bombs discovered, due to insider tipoff; the big wind storm of late October; my drawing class at Valley Ridge and drawing lesson techniques. 11-1: Libby gets her 2nd set of puppy shots (had her 1st set Oct 7, the day before we got her.)
11-2: Election day; May 4th killings in Kent 1970; Iranian stoning of woman may happen tomorrow. 11-3: Big Republican wins in elections, they will rule the House, but not the Senate; Jerry Brown becomes CA gov again! 11-3: Packing to go teach at Art Quilt Tahoe tomorrow. 11-15: AQT musings; it’s Libby’s 3 months birthday today; she’s 16 lbs now – was 5 when we got her Oct 8! 11-16: Big protests over TSA body scans and full pat-downs; I called Sen. Brown, to ask him to not support continuing Bush tax cuts for the rich; Libby’s first stairway lesson; Denny takes Kitchen Tarot to a big book fair in Tampa with Louise Hay;
11-17: iTunes finally got rights to sell all Beatles’ songs! I’m listening to Alice’s Restaurant, in prep for T Day; luggage scales rant; “The Young Victoria” – a good movie we just watched; Michael Moore was on Larry King last night. 11-19: celebrating Jimmy snd Vicki’s 57th birthdays tonight at TJ’s; downloaded “The Agony and the Ecstasy” for Jerry and me to both read. Gretchen read it at 15 and then went into Art History. 11-20: Cholera worsens in Haiti; Obama at NATO in Portugal, after 10 days in Asia; story of meeting Denny and working together on the KT project.
11-21: New Zealand miners – 29 missing since the 19th; working with Libby on the stairs and changing her walking leashes. 11-22: Haiti deaths from cholera now 1,344; Libby slept in our bedroom last night, for the first time (was in cage in diningroom at night til now.) Denny and I are both 1950 Metal Tigers – it’s our 60 year return! People organizing protests of TSA scans for T Day travel day! Yikes! Obama emails news on parts of the new health care bill that go into effect today. 11-23: More on Denny; Scientist sez getting cancer from body scan is same risk rate as being in a plane taken down by terrorists, or being struck by lightning (so it’s enough to stop doing body scans!) Ireland’s financial collapse, like our own; John Kennedy died 47 years ago yesterday; Libby went down the stairs on her own today.
11-24: Body scan protests didn’t happen, as 4.2 million traveled today; An Apple 1 computer sold for $213,600. at auction yesterday; I wrote a record of all the Apple computers we’ve owned – never had a PC. 11-25: T Day. I saw Arlo singing in the Macy’s parade, in the tad I watched it; all 29 New Zealand miners died yesterday, when there was an explosion in the mine. 11-26: Jimmy’s 57th birthday today; T Day party at Frank and Kristi’s yesterday – our first time to ever see their loft. 11-27: Making the green bean casserole to take to Mama Wanda’s; Jimmy’s little birthday party here last night and my brownies he loved.
11-28: Ireland’s protest of 85 billion euros going to help the banks, while the people have to cut back. Eurozone bails out Ireland, like it did Greece; Michael Moore has an insurance exec who’s whistle blowing on insurance companies vs his movie Sicko; I finished my third ink drawing for the KT drawing deck: The Teapot / High Priestess; Libby’s 15 weeks old today; Rita came home from Burma, after going over with Jess and Jon and their 2 sons. 11-29: Lame duck Congress starts today; Haiti’s corrupt election yesterday; Libby gets her last puppy shots and rabies shot; the chewing of the car’s arm rest – call to action to put Clove Oil on all chewable surfaces!
11-30: Darwin quote about the species who’s good at changing being the best survivors; news of Wikileaks leaking State Dept memos; what is WikiLeaks? 12-1: First snow of the winter today; more on WikLeaks; my history with Astrology; unemployment benefits have been cut off for many – Congress debates this vs the tax cuts. I chose 4 cards for the ones on the table in this piece. Asked a question for each, pulled it at random, and then wrote some of Denny’s interpretation about it, from the KT guidebook.
12-2: Wrote Denny quotes in the book I have him writing in.
12-3: I’m coming out on WikiLeaks’ side, because they only want truth and accountability in the world. I watched a long interview from August, with TED asking Julian Assange questions, and him being very candid and certainly not a bad guy. I’m ready to start quilting this piece now. Will be able to listen to a LOT of my audio book “The Agony and the Ecstasy,” while I sew. Yea! Actually finished this book during the quilting, and read a book by the Monks of New Skete, re dog training (also audio.)
12-13: Started writing on the new quilted border of the piece: We’re having a big snowstorm and bitter cold; Libby’s graduated to a medium sized, coral colored collar. No more Turquoise Collar Girl. I’m working with teaching Libby to Fetch better, and she goes up and down the stairs better now. Elizabeth Edwards died Dec 7, of cancer (wife of former Presidential candidate John Edwards.) Virginia has ruled against people being forced to buy health insurance. This will end up at the Supreme Court – could it kill the whole bill????
John Lennon died on Dec 8, 1980 – 30 years ago – Gretchen and I were up at Kent, for my grad school interview with Henry Halem. Paul McCartney was on SNL – sang four times! Is 70 years old. Can that be????!!
Now it’s 12-16, and I’m getting ready for Yoga and our annual Yoga Christmas party. Gotta go.
Love, Lucky
Please enjoy the five detail shots below:
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