Warning: Art-Related Post Below

Just didn't want anyone to stop by expecting to read about shoes or purses and be shocked into a fainting spell at the sight of an actual art-related post. Today I accomplished something besides packing and wasting time. Yay! Believe me, no one is more surprised by this than I am. Cruise Brain doesn't leave a lot of working brain cells for other accomplishments. But you see, the other day I had A Non-Cruise Thought. (ouch!) A few months ago I committed to make a card for a collaborative Tarot art deck called the "Characters in Literature Tarot". My card and text are due on March 15th. I knew this. I even tried to plan ahead for this, by submitting an entry idea quite some time ago. But due to some miscommunication, I didn't get the go-ahead for my idea until I'd moved onto other things. Ok, no problem, I thought. I'll do it right after I get back from our trip. I have plenty of time. That's where the Non-Cruise Thought comes in. A few days ago I really LOOKED at the calendar and realized that if I waited until after out trip I would have 7 days to design and construct a card, write the text, have all my copies printed, rough cut them, and mail them to the project coordinator in California. And when I say 7 days, I mean I have 7 days if I start the very first day after returning and the hell with buying groceries, doing laundry, paying bills, and other such post-trip chores. Um....maybe I don't have plenty of time after all. So the past couple of days I've been scrambling to do all the above create-a-card things and today I finished. Yay again! The package is neatly wrapped and sitting by the front door and will go in the mail tomorrow and that means I don't have to let the thought of the project cross my mind next week OR the week after. Aaahhhh...bliss. Here's a pic of my card, the Two of Wands, and I've included my artist's statement below. The card is a combination of old-fashioned scissors-and-glue collage work and Photoshop tweaking. Based on the character named Barney in the story “Troubling of the Water”, by Zenna Henderson, in the book “Ingathering: The Complete People Stories” At the time of the story, Barney is a teenager, living in rural Arizona in the late 19th century. He’s telling the story a few years later and says he identified with Robinson Crusoe, except he felt like a castaway in time rather than place, anticipating the coming of the 20th century and all the changes he was sure it would bring. He says, “I used to stand on a rock and measure the world full circle, thinking ‘Turn of the Century! Turn of the Century!’, and seeking as though Time were a tide that would come racing through the land at midnight 1899 and that I could see the front edge of the tide beginning already.” (edited for brevity) In this card, we see Barney standing on his rock in the desert, looking for the tide of the 20th century to begin on the horizon. If we look closely we can see a shape forming in the clouds that could be an airplane. What else is hidden in the tide? Only time will tell. The 2 of Wands indicates a kind of “restless waiting” – we can see changes coming, but they aren’t quite here yet. Right now Barney may feel impatient with his life, but it’s a big world out there, with limitless horizons, and soon the tide of change will be within his reach and he’ll be ready to meet it.