While growing up in New England, Jackie Gallo was mesmerized by the trees. As a teenager, she would stand in the middle of the woods in northern Rhode Island — and look up.
In the autumn, the canopy overhead was a kaleidoscope of colors dancing in the sunlight. The forest was hushed, protective, a natural cathedral.
“It felt like visiting the Sistine Chapel,” said the artist, now based in South Hadley, where she has created a 78-card “Tree Tarot” deck coming out this winter. They are just what they sound like — traditional tarot cards whose meaning she has enhanced with the folklore of 26 iconic trees.
“The Tree Tarot: Into the Grove,” the companion exhibition, runs Nov. 4-21 at 33 Hawley, hosted by the Northampton Center for the Arts. There will be an opening reception on Friday, Nov. 13, at Arts Night Out from 5 to 8 p.m., and a more private reception on Saturday, Nov. 14, from 5 to 7 p.m. that will be open to the public. Part of the show is funded by a Massachusetts Cultural Council grant.
Gallo anticipates an immersive exhibit with a whimsical feel — a stroll into a forest of lifelike trees, perhaps with leaves strewn on the floor and Celtic music playing in the background. (Her twin sister is a musician.)
CAROL LOLLIS / Staff Photo
Her South Hadley studio, Autumn Hallows, is itself an entry to the woods abutting Mount Holyoke College. But her path didn’t lead here until 2020 because her early love of colors and inclination toward art took her from Rhode Island to the University of Texas at El Paso, where she studied painting and drawing, then to the University of Hartford for her master of fine arts degree. Next she moved to Long Island, where she taught art for 15 years at St. Joseph’s University, met her husband, and — after years of “pining for New England” —decided to build a home in western Massachusetts.
When the COVID-19 pandemic started, and with it the long pause of the state shutdown, Gallo made an exciting discovery: digital art.
Some of her peers were experimenting with it, and she was intrigued, even though she initially felt that exchanging her painter’s palette for digital design wasn’t tenable. After taking a few online workshops, she was enchanted by tarot cards, which she saw as mini-mixed media that she could amass without needing to hang them on the wall. (She has many, many tarot decks as a result.)
She learned that a standard Rider-Waite-Smith tarot deck has 78 cards, split into 22 Major Arcana and 56 Minor Arcana. (The word “arcana” is derived from the Latin “arcanus,” meaning “secret.”) According to the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Major Arcana include archetypal figures, astrological elements and other eclectic symbols. The Minor Arcana are split into four suits — swords, cups, pentacles (coins) and wands — that represent the four elements. The deck takes its name from publisher Rider and Company, which first printed it in England in 1909; Arthur Edward Waite, who created it; and Pamela Colman Smith, who illustrated it.
The details are highly specific, but Gallo was drawn to illustrating already established cards and newly pairing them with North American trees. Her first illustration was of “Aspen the Fool,” a play on the first card of the Major Arcana, merged with an aspen tree because of its quirky shape.
As she writes on her website, “Some Aspens bend as they grow, and it seems to bring about spontaneity. The Fool’s journey … teaches us to find beauty in the unexpected … The curved Aspens in Colorado symbolize the unpredictable paths of life, encouraging us to take risks, explore new horizons, and cherish the present moment.”
“They’re kind of on a journey that the other trees aren’t on,” she elaborated.
Gallo’s first card unveiled itself as though it was her destiny. “I just started having a ball,” she said, “and I hadn’t felt like that in my whole artistic career.”
As she fiddled with metallics and textures, she learned about the allure of the “Undo” button, which allowed her to maximize effects she’d have to labor over on a canvas in a finite amount of time. But the creative process itself took five years because Gallo is an adjunct professor at two local universities, as well as an instructor at Chicopee Comprehensive High School.
At thetreetarot.com, nature lovers and meaning-seekers can view Gallo’s 78 unique illustrations. Twenty-two different trees represent each Major Arcana, while there is one tree for each suit in the Minor Arcana. (This means that in each suit, there are 14 different versions of sassafras, fig, oak and rowan trees.)
The website also invites visitors to interact with the cards. A “Daily Draw” guides users to one card, while “Find Your Tree” leads to a specific tree. “Ask the Trees” offers four spreads — the “Forest Path,” the “Grove of Wisdom,” the “Tree of Life” and the “Mystical Forest” — each explained in detail and in summary.
As an educator, Gallo revels in the opportunity to teach people about folklore and the importance of protecting the environment. A portion of proceeds for the deck and related merchandise goes toward conservation nonprofits of her choosing, such as the Old-Growth Forest Network and the Arbor Day Foundation. She emphasized that the more she receives directly, the more she will gladly give away.
“I’m really passionate about saving natural lands and natural landscapes,” she explained. “Hopefully, people will enjoy the imagery and kind of go, ‘I want to learn more.’”
At present, Gallo is not an actual tarot reader, but she is considering taking classes at AwenTree in Northampton. She has long crafted nature-based jewelry and is now combining it with some of the images from the Tree Tarot deck.
In addition to the November art show, Gallo will be doing deck signings at Groundings in Florence on Dec. 5. Her Tree Tarot deck will be available for purchase in early December at Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley and Barnes & Noble in Hadley. Follow Gallo’s Instagram for more events, and visit thetreetarot.com to pre-order.
She isn’t sure if tarot tells the future, but when she’s feeling overwhelmed she’ll shuffle one of her many, artsy decks and see what card she gets. “I get what I need, every single time,” she said.
Gallo has felt welcomed by western Mass, and her home in South Hadley, a gateway to the forest, reminds her every day that she is part of something bigger.
“In New England, you can kind of feel the history, and you can feel the generations before you,” said the artist. “I tell everyone, go for a walk in the woods and you’ll know what’s happening. The trees tell you.”
“I always felt the most myself in the woods, and always had an affinity for something unseen,” she continued. “I couldn’t get that to come out in my art until I did this project.”
Melissa Karen Sances can be reached at melissaksances@gmail.com.