nonney oddlokken
After living through an incredibly intense year due to severe house damage from Hurricane Ida … which in itself, took place during the Covid-19 pandemic, Nonney Oddlokken felt there was no structure in her life. Rebuilding a destroyed house at any point is a devastatingly emotional task, but a global pandemic brought it to a plangent level. Every day was a whole new set of struggles. All that was even “Covid-Normal” was lost. Her daily creative routine was eradicated. She felt like she was in this never-ending suspended state of fight or flight, and was desperately in need of any remnants of structure. Something that could give her a clue as to what was next.
Tarot cards are centuries old. Dating back to the 1400s. Starting as a board game, they moved on to a storytelling game before becoming a fortune-telling game around the 1800s. Being a visual storyteller, Nonney always loved the narrative properties of tarot cards. The infinite possibilities of their stories. She was inspired by their structure, in particular, the Major Arcana. So with that, the artist decided to create her own tarot cards based on her own “Tiny, Little Fables” Louisiana narratives. So for this exhibition, Oddlokken began a new series: Louisiana Oracles, with 14 of the 22 major arcana cards. This will be an ongoing series that will become the entire 78-card tarot deck.
Oddlokken is a native of New Orleans, whose works have been exhibited throughout Louisiana, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, the Gulf Coast, Oklahoma, and South Carolina, in addition to having work in the Southern Ohio Museum of Art’s permanent collection.
Artist Member Since 2017
Bachelor of Fine Arts, Strykejernet Fine Arts Academy (Oslo, Norway)
current works
Threadwork on paper. Handmade stitched paper overlay, stitched collage elements, hand-stitched gold thread embellishment.
25" x 19" each