Apologies for the late entry, this is a busy time of year for me! The Scorpio card which is the second Swamp card released a couple weeks ago now.
Again, my perspective on swamps and the connection with swamp cards in MtG to death relates to the fecundity of these environments, where dead rotting matter is constantly turned over into new life. I was inspired by time spent in one of my favorite places in the world, the NJ Pine Barrens. The Pine Barrens are full of carnivorous bog plants, namely pitchers and sun dews, and because this happens to be my partner’s sign and this is a place we go together a lot it just leapt to the front of my mind. There’s also an element of danger to these plants, which entice passing insects only to trap and drown them, and I felt like that was fitting for a sign that is both legendarily spicy and connected to a dangerous little creature like the scorpion. Of course scorpions don’t live in swamps, quite the opposite as they’re dry desert creatures, but that’s okay because this is not a nature documentary and those are giant tree scaling fantasy scorpions. So don’t worry.
The sign is associated with the color red. While red isn’t dominant on any of the other cards I felt like I should incorporate it into this design so I tried to make it a sort of apocalyptic poison swamp with a dominating red sky. The color scheme overall is quite different from the others, relying more heavily on primary colors and a lot of deep greens but it’s hard to balance making 12 individual paintings seem connected but different enough to be interesting on their own. Scorpio is associated with passion, in every sense of the word so both the aforementioned fertility of the swamp and the danger of the elements seemed to fit for me. Scorpio is a water sign, while Capricorn, the other swamp card, is an earth sign, which is fitting as swamps are both mineral rich and incredibly wet.
The reason I’m getting to this entry so late is because this sign happens to contain two dates I always have creative projects around; Halloween and my partner Mike’s bday. For Halloween the past however many years I’ve made elaborate paper mache masks as a personal project. Here’s last year’s Humbaba mask:
This years was maybe my most ambitious, an idea I got two weeks before Halloween and finished a couple days before. This is my version of one of the two fancifully (incorrectly) reconstructed statues known as the Minoan Snake Goddess. It’s made out of paper mache, paper clay, cardboard, rope, paint and glitter paper and the small snakes are made with crayola Model Magic. The color and some of the details like the earrings are based on Minoan frescoes rather than the original statue.
My second project was Mike’s present. I live for making weird things to delight my loved ones, and this year I made Mike a mini paper mache Scabby the rat as he’s a hero in our household. We recently got some face time with him while spending time on the picket line with the PMA Union as part of their successful strike!
This October also marked my 3rd year participating in SpiralQ’s PeopleHood a genuinely beautiful and chaotic people’s parade which brings activist groups and neighbors together to make props and puppets for a big loud procession through West Philly. While I didn’t have as much time to contribute to making things as previous years because of my work schedule I did manage to help make a big new banner for Shut Down Berks and build these big flapping bat puppets for the campaign to save the Meadows at FDR park from deforestation and development. I got to pilot one of the bats in the parade! If you don’t know about SpiralQ, check them out, maybe sign up to make regular donations to support their amazing work. You can see photos of this years parade by Philly photographer Joe Piette here.
I have a bunch of projects I’ve been saying I’ll finish that are in states of semi completion mostly because I keep getting distracted by paper mache and also taking the time every month to write about and make mini paintings for these MtG drops, but next month is the LAST CARD! Going foward I’ll start opening up proof commissions but I’ll also hopefully be completing a number of other non Magic related commissions and finally finish an almost finished zine I’ve been chipping away at all year.
Just some final recommendations; if you’re interested in learning more about the NJ Pine Barrens I suggest this beautiful John McPhee book. Also check out this article Kim Kelly wrote about the Pine Barren’s most notorious boy, the Jersey Devil.