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Winter 2003

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Gallery: Tarot card

Marietta Pritchard




	by Tyran Grillo '04

THE CARDS ARE DONE IN grays and blacks and have the precision of a steel-cut engraving, but the tool of choice for artist Tyran Grillo ’04 is a mechanical pencil with HB graphite. He draws his entomologically correct butterflies freehand. The collection of his original tarot cards was on display in the W.E.B. Du Bois Library during January.

The idea for “The Sylph Deck,” (sylph is Greek for butterfly) “a lepidopteran tarot,” came from the artist’s own fascination with butterflies combined with a strong interest in the occult. In a New Age shop in Missouri, Grillo asked the saleswoman if anyone had ever made a butterfly deck. She answered: “Maybe you should.”

The result is a haunting series of images in which these cards, used for centuries in divining the future, have been transformed into a representation of the butterfly’s life cycle.

Grillo, who is 24, has not studied art at UMass. He describes his artistic life as mainly a “solitary endeavor, but with some invaluable advice from mentors along the way.” He is majoring in Japanese language and is now also studying Hebrew, one result of his “explorations with the tarot.”

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