The Potluck - World. Card #21 in the Kitchen Tarot

I made about five art quilts during the Presidential Election races in 2008, including both the Primary and General election races. (I also painted our huge garage door that Fall, with a mural of my family and Barack Obama.) I chronicled the history of those elections in all the writing of the pieces that year, along with lots of personal stories and other news events. In 2004 I started going big with whole cloth airbrush painting and journaling on the painting with my airpen and fabric paint going through the airpen.

this piece was one of the art quilts I made about the Democratic Primary of 2008, in which I was rooting for Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton was running against him. It was time for me to create the art quilt that would be the World card in my Kitchen Tarot deck (78 card images, begun in 1998 and hopefully finished in 2022 or 2023 or so!) For the World, I almost made the Kitchen Sink, but settled on having that image in the piece, but calling it the Potluck.

I imagined a massive Potluck Supper of all the nations of the world, coming together, and Barack and Hillary each bringing a pie they'd made themselves. I gave him a Hope Pie, and Hillary a Faith Pie. I drew my St Quilta the Comforter icon as the hostess of the Potluck, sitting there like a buddha girl, and I set a plate on the table for each of many countries. I put a couple of wolf guardians in the picture: guarding the Potluck with Trust and Tolerance written on them. I put fortune cookies around the piece, and wrote a section of the long NYT op-ed that Caroline Kennedy submitted, endorsing Barack Obama for President, on each of the fortune cookie papers.

I wrote stories about people I know who travel a lot, and about my own world adventures, few as they are. I wrote the words to Joni Mitchell's song "California" somewhere on here, because she sings about being in Europe and missing her adopted home of California.

In the window in the top of this piece is a woman dancing, with the four suits' symbols of my Kitchen Tarot deck in the corners of the window. The traditional Coins are Potholders in my deck; Cups are Pyrex Cups; Swords are Paring Knives; and Wands are Wooden Spoons. This was the last card in the 22 card section in Tarot, called the Major Arcana. (there's a #0 card, the Fool: the Colander in my KT deck.) The suits are in the Minor Arcana, and I was about ready to start making those 56 art quilts. I'm still working on those minor cards now, and will finish them in about 6 more years!

I love making my Kitchen Tarot card quilts. I was able to get the Major cards published in 2010, and I hope to be able to get the full deck of 79 pieces made into a deck and book eventually. Dennis Fairchild got the dubious honor of trying to explain my art quilts and their bizarre imagery, for the little 22 card Kitchen Tarot deck, published by Hay House in 2010. He was also the one who got us published, knowing the owner of Hay House, Louise Hay!