Burning Man 2003: Beyond Belief. A project that consumed the weeks before the burn.
The 2003 project was a full tarot deck. Not a partial deck, not a themed subset — all 78 cards, with friends from the community sitting for portraits as the major and minor arcana. I did most of the digital art in Photoshop Elements. Meloney sat for the Empress. Swartie was the Magician. Others took the roles that seemed to fit.
We punched the corners, printed roughly a hundred decks, and brought them out to the playa. The deck was based on the Albano-Waite and the Crowley Thoth designs, which gave us a visual framework to riff from while making the faces recognizable to people who knew us.
The logistical undertaking of coordinating half a dozen people to create their personal cards, then finishing the rest of the deck in the week before the burn, was more than I’d budgeted for. By the time we drove out, I was running on fumes and momentum.
We handed out almost all of the decks. People were genuinely happy to receive them.
The disc golf project that year was less successful. The propane flames were too windy and the electroluminescent wire didn’t work right. You win some and you lose some.