The Altered Playing Card

Sometimes altered playing cards are just the thing. The small scale presents a million challenges, not the least of which is deciding how much of the playing card to reveal in the collage. How much of the card is too much, what amount is not enough?

This card takes the overkill approach and actually shows the faces of two playing cards. There's the regular old card on the bottom, and then, over that, an acetate transparency made from one of my deck of Cyrillic playing cards. The French text is from my 1837 copy of Journal des Demoiselles, a precious book lovingly featured in my last blog: http://lauratringaliholmes.blogspot.com/2011/07/letting-it-rip.html.

Queen of Clubs altered playing card, 2011

On the following playing card, I also featured card characteristics: the aces for a sort of two-thumbs up to the guy behind the wheel, and the "Bicycle" because it keeps that Queen song "Bicycle Race" looping in my head. Which at the moment is a good thing, although I can see it getting very bad very fast.

Lessons Learned the Hard Way altered playing card, 2011
(Wheel photo courtesy of the collection of Mrs. Inman)

This next card is about seeing. Since there are three sets of eyes, it felt right to me to leave in the two 3 symbols. I made sure they were dreamily floating in the starscape to anchor the corners, but didn't need them to do any more than that.  

Star Dust altered playing card, 2011
(Old photo courtesy of the collection of Mrs. Inman)

By contrast, in this piece the playing card symbology assumes a more important role. I needed the darkness of three of the four spades to balance out that honking big tin star.

To the Stars altered playing card, 2011

For a completely different approach, these two cards show nothing of the playing cards on which they were built. Early on in the process, I realized that I should have chosen Jacks or Jokers for these cards instead of the mundane numerics I did select. Once I got the Jacks  and Jokers in my mind, nothing else would do. I could have thrown out the cards and started afresh, but chose instead to seam in the pieces of the photos that I had originally cut off. These cards now remind me to take a breath and give myself a chance to let design ideas develop.

Turn Of a Phrase altered playing cards, 2011
(Photos courtesy of James Sorby)

If you enjoy altered playing cards, you will want to keep up with Liz Cohn at http://lizole.deviantart.com. Liz is currently gathering cards for a May 2012 show in Portland, Oregon, where over 150 hundred artists and well over 800 altered playing cards will be displayed. A large scale installation for small-scale works of art--how cool is that? Even cooler is that many (or most) of the cards are collaborations—sometimes involving three or four artists. Like angels dancing on the heads of pins, yes, it's amazing what can fit on a playing card. Here's a collaborative card that will be appearing in the show:

He's Such a Gas collaborative altered playing card, 2010
Liz Cohn, Audrey Smith,& Laura Tringali Holmes

Thanks for listening!