Well, the opening was... ...wonderful!
I had lots of feedback, and people "got it". There've been more requests for a deck version of the work, and I'm now seriously considering it. Some photos from the opening tonight...
( The exhibitors )
( Art and Artist )
( The work )
The exhibition featuring my Visual Arts Honours project "A Trans Tarot Deck" will be opening tomorrow. The opening (and exhibition) will be held at the University Gallery. The opening will start tomorrow at 6:30pm on the 1st November. You are invited to attend, if convenient.
The exhibition will be run between the 1st to the 24th of November, and the gallery is open each Thursday and Friday between the hours of Noon to 6pm. The University gallery is located above the School of Fine Arts administrative block (GS), next to the east car park (C6) - just up the stairs / ramp - see the Callaghan Campus map page for locations of these and other facilities.
If you are in the area, feel free to drop in and view my work, and the works of the other Honours students exhibiting there. I welcome feedback.
When I picked up several sets of prints today, I got the technical officer to take a photo of me and a card.
Yes, that's how big the exhibition ones will be.
I worked on the colour of these on the weekend:
I think The Gatekeeper needs more work - the skin tones are too dark.
Only coloured two more cards today - will explain when I get home. These are:
Free Image Gallery with PicTiger
I think that the Motivation card is just right, but that the Cybele card needs some work (mostly the background). We'll see.
Today I was about to scan the rest of my cards in at 400 dpi at home. Though my PC wouldn't handle editing a multi-layered version of these, it scanned them as flat grey-scale images quite easily. I now have about 200 mb of images to work from.
The process is pretty straight forward too, and the same technique I've used in colouring my web comics. Only have 20 more to do. On Monday I bought a 2 Gb memory stick to store them while I'm working on the images at uni (Big-W had they on special for $76), and also a pair of cotton gloves so I don't get crap all over them. Yesterday I made a large cardboard folio to store the paper versions.
It's all coming together. Tomorrow I should be able to colour in another 4-6 cards and print off samples to check. Rather than just send them off to print, I'll wait until Monday so that I can check for errors. Did this on the first two cards and it was a good thing, as I found several errors and corrected them before printing. At $46 for each print, I want to make damn sure they're just right.
OK, I've been hard at work on teh NUSA PC scanning and reworking my drafts in 400dpi, and now in colour. The sample at left (click for a larger version shows the Gender Dysphoria (Card 0) and Gender Synthesis (Card 21). Well, I just spent about 2 hours trying to do something on my PC, which it just couldn't manage.
What I was doing was creating a 110cm wide by 78 cm high graphics image (at 150 dpi) for a test print on the Photomedia printer. Now my software and hardware seems up to doing things like editing photos, and creating web comics and web graphics, but this just seems a bit too much!
See the final tarot cards will be 52 x 74 cm (I can fit two on a printer width with 2 cm margins all round. But my PC is only running WIN98SE, with 256 mb of Ram, and running at 200 MHz. Sigh. I could get so far, but updates between changes too between 5 to 10 minutes each! When I scanned in the images at 300 dpi, I used the PC and scanner at NUSA, rather than my own.
Gag me with a spoon - I need to upgrade this somehow, or find a work around. Could be a few hours spent at NUSA before this is done.
Yesterday I made $70 tarot reading at Second Life Books!
As you probably know (because I advertised it) Liz has been thinking of closing the shop, though just of late there's be an increase in turnover there. Maybe people have finally heard about it. Anyway, I wasn't expecting it, but several people contact Liz saying they wanted readings. Yahoo - I had to give this up because, well the clients stopped coming. But it seems that some still do. 
The money I made's put aside to help print my Tarot Deck. That's $70 in, and another $200 expected. As I don't have to have all the money (about $550) up front to print them the way I want, I can at least make a start on it. 
Seems I've come to a big decision about my Trans Tarot Deck.
All along, I've wanted to print them for exhibition at a minimum of A2 size (see A4 for a comparison of paper sizes) or 420 × 594 mm. Now it seems that I can either...
...now I don't have $520 to hand. I am getting $200 coming to me sometime in the future, for artwork done recently. I mentioned this to my supervisor and he suggested that I find a "sponsor" or grant from somewhere. I need to sort this out before I can go much further.
See, I can go with colour, or I can go with black and white, but I don't have the time or money to do both.
Suggestions anyone?
I've finally done the last three cards in my Trans Tarot Deck, as shown below. The last image is the "Title Card" I intend to use in the exhibition planned for later this year.
Discrimination (Justice)
Motivation (The Star)
Then and Now (The Chariot)
Exhibition Title Card
Of course, there's still a lot of work to be done: borders need to be added, they all need to be printed A2 size (and then mounted) and the exhibition arranged.
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zvi and krja
