Paula Millet-Deck Creator, Collage Artist, Graphic Designer:
As an exhibit designer, graphic artist and illustrator, I have had years of experience working for museums, higher education, and an assortment of other interesting employers and clients. As much as I have enjoyed this professional work, I often wanted to do a design project just for my own amusement. Over the years I dreamed of creating my own Tarot deck, hence: Boadicea’s Tarot of Earthly Delights.
I appreciate Tarot primarily for its creative, artistic presentation of rich and complex symbolism. Some cards represent big ideas such as major life events or stages of one’s inner journey. Others may correspond to personalities or situations we may regularly encounter. Reading cards or having them read for you is a fascinating way to gain a deeper appreciation of life’s vicissitudes.
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Caroline Kenner-Author, Boadicea’s Tarot Reader’s Companion Guidebook, Muse:
I am a third degree Witch, a Priestess, a Tarotiste, and a longtime community organizer for the Washington, DC/Baltimore Pagan community. I have been reading Tarot for more than fifty years and have been reading Tarot professionally for twenty years. I have served as a community organizer on the boards of directors of five 501(c)(3) Pagan community organizations over the course of thirty years.
For a decade, my husband, Jason Linhart, and I owned The Fool’s Dog, a Tarot app company offering almost 100 decks as apps for smartphones and tablet computers, published under license from individual deck creators and publishing houses.
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The Collage Illustrations:
We hope that as you examine individual cards you will ask yourself, "What is going on here?" There is a story in every one, and each story is personal and unique to each reader.
The collage illustrations for Boadicea’s Tarot of Earthly Delights are unique, transformative artworks. Each of the 81 collages is much more than the sum of its parts. Through extensive recombination and hands-on photo editing of the many components original new works have been created. Individual collages each contain elements from at least five or six–and often up to as many as a dozen–different public domain sources. Each card illustration is just one integral element of the entire Tarot deck entity.
With their quirky imagery and humorous juxtaposition of elements the collages are presented as whimsical parodies of classical paintings; especially those works originally created to appeal to the robber barons and upper classes of America’s gilded age. We hope you are both amused and delighted by this reinterpretation of the genre.
In addition to the RWS iconography and the source artworks themselves, some other aesthetic influences include the works of Monty Python, Edward Gorey, and J.J. Grandville; as well as the contents of ever so many weird and wonderful museum collections.
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Related Projects:
Paula contributed to the collaborative decks: The Star and Crown Oracle Deck, https://rabbitsmoontarot.com/star-crown-oracle,
and Tarot Pink for Cancer, https://www.thegamecrafter.com/crowdsale/Tarot-Pink
She provided graphic design for Cheryl Fair’s Magical Realism Tarot, https://www.etsy.com/listing/220930126/magical-realism-tarot-deck
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NOTES:
1) AI was NOT used for any part of this project.
2) These new collage compositions in no way imply the approval or intent of the original creators of the artworks or an endorsement of this project or Boadicea Design, LLC.