Oracle Cards

Last winter, I spent an entertaining morning forming faces out of polymer clay. Ever since then, I have been conjuring up various ideas for including them in my creations. I used quite a few of these faces in my 2007 Journal quilt, but can't unveil it until after the opening of the International Quilt Festival in Houston later this month.


In the meantime, I started a series of Oracle cards, each one depicting a different spiritual icon. I did a bit of online research to help establish this series based on spiritual mythology from around the world. My Wikipedia research found this information:

An oracle is a person or agency considered to be a source of wise counsel or prophetic opinion; an infallible authority, usually spiritual in nature. It can also be a prediction of the future, from deities, that is spoken through another object or life-form. In the ancient world many sites gained a reputation for the dispensing of oracular wisdom: they too became known as "oracles".
Isis is a goddess in Egyptian mythology. She was most prominent mythologically as the wife and sister of Osiris and mother of Horus, and was worshipped as the archetypal wife and mother.

I began my series with a group of sketches on 8 x 5 inch index cards, which provide good ratio of proportion for the size of my polymer clay faces. Initially, I planned to make a folded book from a single sheet of background fabric, so I planned a layout accordingly.

I painted a single piece of fabric in a neutral shade,

Then, I fused the background fabrics into position.

To be continued . . . .